Category: Poetry

Point Wolf

WOLF POINT4

The Lewis and Clark Expedition passed by here, westward bound, in May 1805. Fur trappers and traders followed them a few years later. Steamboats began making it from St. Louis up the Missouri as far as Fort Benton in the early 1860s. Wolf Point was the halfway point between Bismarck and Fort Benton. Wood choppers supplied cord wood for boats stopping . . .

The Hot Spring Post-Pinkerton

PINKERTON HOT SPRINGS5

Even though this land was Ute territory, the upper Animas River Valley was first settled by prospectors in the spring of 1860. Charles Baker, returning from the mines north of Silverton, established “Old Animas City” and built the first bridge across the Animas River. The community lasted less than a year before it was abandoned. During . . .

Once, I returned Tulip, Once I became

once the city sprouted with gods—

seeds whispers, freshly braided with the breaths of the

ancients; tombs cracked impulses like

husks and roots curled from the bones of history. say

once, children built homes in the ribs of

cedars. their colours of laughter carved into a country

bark. once, elders named their dreams

after a tree. for trees do not forget the orders . . .

Gratefulness

the saddest part about survival is how often it is at the very end of things

that a rough road becomes a calm body of water

 

and there’s suddenly no need to look for knives. here’s another way of saying this:

there’s a special undocumented time the world becomes your mother.

 

a trail that ends wilderness. a stranger, bitter and concerned, saying

someone . . .

This is not a love poem

As I walk past the sex store downtown, I think

of flags, how the zealots strap them on and

screw us. I am not interested in the fire

 

of your want, unless you want to stop

this world from burning, unless you want

to topple the men from their mountains

 

of heads, their slot machine eyes spinning and

spinning and spinning. No, this is not a love

poem. I will not . . .

Nightmare

I wanted to throw my arms around the thick white neck of my brother’s polar bear and cry I’m glad that you are safe from the endless water. I wanted it to nose me, too. I wanted my palm against the fur, and the warm skin beneath. I wanted to see our bones. I wanted to know they were strong. I wanted to be unafraid of being swallowed—by the bear, or the blue night, or the holes . . .