they never meant to call her beautiful
what they meant by beauty was:
cheapdirtybrownprostitutedrugaddictalcoholicfirewaterslut
when they write:
“an indian about 35 years old
naked from the waist down
they don’t mean beauty as in:
or: “pleasing the sense or mind aesthetically;
of a very high standard; excellent”
she is beautiful for a squaw in ‘62
of white men who burn in the loins
for the teal-shade of a browning bruise;
“how to say beautiful in cree”
& when i type that into google i get:
“brutal murder-sex assault case”
seeRE:rinelleharpercindygladuetinafontaine
i read somewhere that saskatchewan
& in tisdale you can buy a mug that says:
the land of rape and honey
that’s where my kokum is buried
& her grave is a modest little place
where rabbits visit & sometimes chew
where little dandelions bloom
to her children who are scattered
across the plains of kanata
who gifts a man six years
for the death of three women;
her son who lost his name to a polish man
& felt the sting of day schools
even if priests beat & made honey
with their fists smooshed
into the sweet rot of little brown boys
who liked hockey & lived in suburbs
with whites who made them wait
& broke their noses on the ice—
but you’re still not ready to apologize
my kokum has made many headlines:
being the most consistent
a fifty word article that calls for sympathy
not for the “strangulation death
steven kozaruk of esterhazy
who “was suffering from the effects
of alcohol and sleeping pills”
even with a “seven-man jury”
& “thirteen witnesses,” lives—
his whiteness is his weakness
(even if its biceps can crack a brown neck like a wishbone)
and that weakness is his innocence;
the life of my kokum is worth:
interweave, interlay, interplay, interact
terra|corona|letum|nullius
i see the face of kozaruk
with a rag-tag little monument
with a million questions like:
what would life have been like
if you had lived beyond thirtyfive?
would the cancers in my dad
spelled doom on his skin?
would i be able to speak cree
without having to google translate
would you make me cookies
& teach me how to sew back on the limbs
to my plush rabbit floppy ears?
would you call me “m’boy?”
powwows, bingo nights too?
would you make sure i feed the rez dogs
when they all come around?
would you make me a jingle dress
cause i want to be a pretty dancer like you—
would you teach me what it means to be two-spirit
tell me i can be a beautiful brown boy in love?
make me say niizh manitoag—feel the power on the tongue?
would you teach me to knead bannock
a real ratio for reckoning?
can i call you on the phone?
i promise not to call collect
i just want to hear your voice
tell you i learned what it means
kisâkihitin; my god, kisâkihitin
can i ask you something quick?
are you okay up there in godknowswhere?
do you see what we’ve all done?
my dad says these things all happen for a reason
that i wouldn’t be here if they didn’t
did you have to die for me to be alive?
heygranheygranheygranheygran
cooking macaroniandtomatosoup
for twelve hundred missing & murdered women,
it’s just, am i supposed to hate him, gran?
tell him that with one death
he ruined the lives of an entire family?
i want to tell him that the life of a person
& when you he strangled the life out of you
in a queens hotel shoddy little bed
the last gasping breath you exhaled
held in it little particles
a bay leaf boiling in tomato sauce;
the soft cry of a baby boy
the smell of sweet grass smudging
monsters from our bedrooms;
tell him: when you kill a memory
turn off the light in a home;
you destroy a world where children
—& aint that the hardest truth?
no marvellous country house poem
no faeryland, no golden world
i’m just a little brown boy
writing for a kokum he’s never met;
these spaces can transform
who can claw, scrape, fight
who can write on a piece of paper
sign a name instead of an ‘X’
that says, “this is my kokum
& her name is Rose Whitehead;
beauty queen extraordinaire.”
I dedicate this poem to all missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit peoples; for their families, friends, loved ones, and kin. We are a collective trauma that demands to be examined, reconciled, resolved, and healed.
Today we survive; tomorrow we resist.
