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Headless, beneath concrete and stone pyramid, eagle stretching above assembled bones, you do not rest. Across the prarie, riding in a Model-T, your headless soul still searches for your skull. At the Apache Casino and Smoke Shop tourists buy photographs with your head firmly between your shoulders. Postcards sail, from eyes to eyes, wearing your grim face. Cursing Custer, Buffalo Soldiers pursued you: freed from slavery they enslaved you to these white-male dreams; bodiless paradoxes surround your head's glass tomb. Sins of sons and fathers insult your honour; whispered crimes and future conspiracies demand exposure, but trapped in tortured silence you suffer their depravities and degradations. At the stone temple of The Brotherhood of Death, the Nations, who fear no evil, will gather. Placing tobacco and feathers at evil's door, they will drum until the walls come down. Wrapping you in a sacred bundle, the Nations will carry you back to Fort Sill. Placing tobacco and feathers at your grave, they will drum until the body is whole, until the hoop's restoration until the corpse has risen until seven generations feel secure. · · · · · ·
Resources Poetry on Swans Gerard Donnelly Smith, a poet and musician, teaches creative writing, literature and composition at Clark College in Vancouver WA. CERRO de la ESTRELLA (Logan Elm Press, 1992) was chosen for The Governor's Award for the Arts in Ohio, 1992. Excerpts from THE AMERICAN CORPSE (10 poems) were published in Apex of the M in 1995. He is the current director of the Columbia Writers Series, an Honorary Board Member of The Mountain Writers Series, and co-advisor of the Native American Student Council at Clark College. He has also organized readings for Poets Against the War. Do you wish to share your opinion? We invite your comments. E-mail the Editor. Please include your full name, address and phone number. If we publish your opinion we will only include your name, city, state, and country. Please, feel free to insert a link to this poem on your Web site or to disseminate its URL on your favorite lists, quoting the first paragraph or providing a summary. However, please DO NOT steal, scavenge or repost this work on the Web without the expressed written authorization of Swans. This material is copyrighted, © Gerard Donnelly Smith 2003. All rights reserved. |
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