Dinner Time

There's almost silence

at the graves of

Wounded Knee.  Wind-blown beads

on deer-skin shoe-strings

clink against broken

Thunderbird bottles.

Bud cans tumble

across dead dried grass.

Townie high school kids, bored

in history class, left them, homage

to something the young, liberal teacher

said in whispered tones. He’s on the Principal’s

shit-list again, not much liked by most

parents, too, who, in private, still say,

the only good ones, are dead ones.

Can you image? It ain’t right,

but who made the wrong?

Kids say, not us - we played

no part. Besides,

dinner’s waiting at home.

Meatloaf. Let's go.

It would be

a shame if it

got cold.

The Immigrant

I don't know your hunger-scape,
your have and nots, what you
need, the hive you inhabit. You
might as well buzz about
in strange fields, making secret honey
I'll never taste. You exist
having loved, been kissed, having lost,
now rejected because you're in the way,
take up space, took a seat on the bus before
the lady with the Barbara Bush teased back hair
could sit down first. You're as welcome as
a Starling at a bird bath, a plague as old as
burgundy blood waters, falling frogs, showers of
rock and fire. Still misunderstood, sentenced
without trial like the little fat kid in third grade
I called friend. Went to his house after school
thinking the others weren't looking,
and the next day,
when they asked,
before the recess bells
chimed three times,
I denied
I did.

Premonition

Once, in the sweep of prairie,

they heard the wind, the eternal one’s scratchy voice

whisper through dried blades, rattle

desiccated husks. They waited for red skies,

rocks to speak long shadows, black words telling them

the days are short, you must go

south to the shelter of Cottonwoods and Willows,

on the banks of the river that flows lazy

like the tail of a grazing pony.

At night, the star’s bright music

directed the heart’s quiet drum beat

under sky bears,

Standing Rock to Rosebud,

Orion showered arrows
across the Milky Way, 

a sign,
birch skinned beasts

will be heaped upon the earth

like piles of dung,

shape-shifters,
not bear, buffalo, pronghorn, wolf,
never satisfied, always hungry,
always wanting more.
'Who are they?', one asked.
'When will they come?'
The Sky Reader turned
her eyes to Taurus,
cackled at the glow of Pleiades.
'Make Death your friend.
The only thing certain
is the coming
of snow.'