I Read Your Letters, America

For Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I offer this poem of mine

I Read Your Letters, America*

So now I know about your lies
lies you told Sitting Bull
and Chief Joseph
over and over again
before the God mountains
and sacred grass

So now I know about your bullets
and your torture
how you tore the hearts from the Lakota, the Apache and the Nez Pers
how you tried to stretch their souls onto a cross

Shame on you, America
I didn’t know my father was a thief
it will be hard now to ride in the Buick
with the top down
the radio dancing over the corpses under the highway

*Will appear in the fall edition of Waymark magazine