by Natalie Diaz
this period of exile.
The Gospel of Guy No-Horse
At The Injun That Could, a jalopy bar drooping and lopsided
on the bank of the Colorado River—a once mighty red body
now dammed and tamed blue—Guy No-Horse was glistening
drunk and dancing fancy with two white gals—both yellow-haired
tourists still in bikini tops, freckled skins blistered pink
by the savage Mohave Desert sun.
Though The Injun, as it was known by locals, had no true dance floor—
truths meant little on such a night—card tables covered in drink, ash,
and melting ice had been pushed aside, shoved together to make a place
for the rhythms that came easy to people in the coyote hours
beyond midnight.
In the midst of Camel smoke hanging lower and thicker
than a September monsoon, No-Horse rode high, his PIMC-issued
wheelchair transfigured—a magical chariot drawn by two blond,
beer-clumsy palominos perfumed with coconut sunscreen and dollar-fifty
Budweisers. He was as careful as any man could be at almost 2 a.m.
to avoid their sunburned toes—in the brown light of The Injun, chips
in their toenail polish glinted like diamonds.
Other Indians noticed the awkward trinity and gathered round
in a dented circle, clapping, whooping, slinging obscenities
from their tongues of fire: Ya-ha! Ya-ha! Jeering their dark horse,
No-Horse, toward the finish line of an obviously rigged race.
No-Horse didn’t hear their rabble, which was soon overpowered
as the two-man band behind the bar really got after it—a jam
probably about love, but maybe about freedom, and definitely
about him, as his fair-haired tandem, his denim-skirted pendulums
kept time. The time being now—
No-Horse sucked his lips, imagined the taste of the white girls’
thrusting hips. Hey! He sang. Hey! He smiled. Hey! He spun around
in the middle of a crowd of his fellow tribesmen, a sparkling centurion
moving as fluid as an Indian could be at almost two in the morning,
rolling back, forth, popping wheelies that tipped his big head
and swung his braids like shiny lassos of lust. The two white gals
looked down at him, looked back up at each other, raised their plastic
Solo cups-runneth-over, laughing loudly, hysterical at the very thought
of dancing with a broken-down Indian.
But about that laughter, No-Horse didn’t give a damn.
This was an edge of rez where warriors were made on nights
like these, with music like this, and tonight he was out, dancing
at The Injun That Could. If you’d seen the lightning of his smile,
not the empty space leaking from his thighs, you might have believed
that man was walking on water, or at least that he had legs again.
And as for the white girls slurring around him like two bedraggled
angels, one holding on to the handle of his wheelchair, the other
spilling her drink all down the front of her shirt, well, for them
he was sorry. Because this was not a John Wayne movie,
this was The Injun That Could, and the only cavalry riding this night
was in No-Horse’s veins. Hey! Hey! Hey! he hollered.
A Woman with No Legs
for Lona Barrackman
Plays solitaire on TV trays with decks of old casino cards Trades her clothes for faded nightgowns long & loose like ghosts Drinks water & Diet Coke from blue cups with plastic bendy straws Bathes twice a week Is dropped to the green tiles of her HUD home while her daughters try to change her sheets & a child watches through a crack in the door Doesn’t attend church services cakewalks or Indian Days parades Slides her old shoes under the legs of wooden tables & chairs Lives years & years in beds & wheelchairs stamped “Needles Hospital” in white stencil Dreams of playing kick-the-can in asphalt cul-de-sacs below the brown hum of streetlights about to burn out Asks her great-grandchildren to race from one end of her room to the other as fast as they can & the whole time she whoops Faster! Faster! Can’t remember doing jackknifes or cannonballs or breaking the surface of the Colorado River Can’t forget being locked in closets at the old Indian school Still cries telling how she peed the bed there How the white teacher wrapped her in her wet sheets & made her stand in the hall all day for the other Indian kids to see Receives visits from Nazarene preachers Contract Health & Records nurses & medicine men from Parker who knock stones & sticks together & spit magic saliva over her Taps out the two-step rhythm of Bird dances with her fingers Curses in Mojave some mornings Prays in English most nights Told me to keep my eyes open for the white man named Diabetes who is out there somewhere carrying her legs in red biohazard bags tucked under his arms Asks me to rub her legs which aren’t there so I pretend by pressing my hands into the empty sheets at the foot of her bed Feels she’s lost part of her memory the part the legs knew best like earth Her missing kneecaps are bright bones caught in my throat
Tortilla Smoke: A Genesis
In the beginning, light was shaved from its cob,
white kernels divided from dark ones, put to the pestle
until each sparked like a star. By nightfall, tortillas sprang up
from the dust, billowed like a fleet of prairie schooners
sailing a flat black sky, moons hot white
on the blue-flamed stove of the earth, and they were good.
Some tortillas wandered the dry ground
like bright tribes, others settled through the floury ceiling
el cielo de mis sueños, hovering above our tents,
over our beds—floppy white Frisbees, spinning, whirling
like project merry-go-rounds—they were fruitful and multiplied,
subduing all the beasts, eyeteeth, and bellies of the world.
How we prayed to the tortilla god: to roll us up
like burritos—tight and fat como porros—to hold us
in His lips, to be ignited, lit up luminous with Holy Spirit
dancing on the edge of a table, grooving all up and down
the gold piping of the green robe of San Peregrino—
the saint who keeps the black spots away,
to toke and be token, carried up up
away in tortilla smoke, up to the steeple
where the angels and our grandpas live—
porque nuestras madres nos dijeron que viven allí—
high to the top that is the bottom, the side, the side,
the space between, back to the end that is the beginning—
a giant ball of masa rolling, rolling, rolling down,
riding hard the arc of earth—gathering rocks, size, lemon
trees, Joshua trees, creosotes, size, spray-painted
blue bicycles rusting in gardens, hunched bow-legged grandpas in white
undershirts that cover cancers whittling their organs like thorns
and thistles, like dark eyes wide open, like sin—leaving behind
bits and pieces of finger-sticky dough grandmas mistake
for Communion y toman la hostia—it clings to their ribs
like gum they swallowed in first grade.
The grandmas return from misa, with full to the brim
estómagos and overflowing souls, to empty homes.
They tie on their aprons. Between their palms they sculpt and caress,
stroke and press, dozens and dozens of tortillas—stack them
from basement to attic, from wall to wall, crowding closets,
jamming drawers, filling cupboards and el vacío.
At night they kiss ceramic statues of Virgin Marys,
roll rosary beads between their index fingers and thumbs,
weep tears prettie
r than holy water—
sana sana colita de rana si no sanas ahora sanarás mañana—
When they wake they realize frogs haven’t had tails in ages,
they hope gravity doesn’t last long, and they wait—
y esperan y esperan y esperamos—to be carried up up—anywhere—
on round white magic carpets and tortilla smoke.
Reservation Mary
Mary Lambert was born at the Indian hospital on the rez.
She never missed a 3-pointer in the first thirteen years of her life.
She started smoking pot in seventh grade, still, never missed
a 3-pointer, but eventually missed most of her freshman classes
and finally dropped out of high school.
A year or so later, a smooth-faced Mojave who had a jump shot
smoother than a silver can of commodity shortening and soared
for rebounds like he was made of red-tailed hawk feathers
visited her rez for a money tournament. His team won the money,
and he won MVI—Most Valuable Indian.
Afterward, at the little bar on the corner of Indian Route 1,
where the only people not allowed to drink were dialysis patients,
he told Mary she was his favorite, his first string,
that he’d dropped all those buckets for her. He spent his entire cut
of the tournament winnings on her Wild Turkey ’n’ Cokes,
told her he was going to stay the night with her, even though
it was already morning when they stumbled from the bar.
He stayed and stayed and stayed, then left—
her heart felt pierced with spears and arrows, and her belly swelled
round as an August melon.
That was a lifetime ago. Now, she’s seventeen. She kept the baby
and the weight and sells famous frybread and breakfast burritos
at tribal entities on pay days—tortillas round and chewy as Communion
wafers embracing commod cheese and government potatoes,
delivered in tinfoil from the trunk of an old brown Buick
with a cracked windshield and a pair of baby Jordan shoes hanging
from the rearview mirror—her sleeping brown baby tied tightly
into a cradleboard in the backseat.
Just the other day, at a party on first beach, someone asked
if she still had that 3-point touch, if she wished she still played ball,
and she answered that she wished a lot of things,
but what she wished for most at that minute was that she could turn
the entire Colorado River into E & J Ripple—
she went on a beer run instead,
and as she made her way over the bumpy back roads along the river,
that smooth-faced baby in the backseat cried out for something.
Cloud Watching
Betsy Ross needled hot stars to Mr. Washington’s bedspread—
they weren’t hers to give. So, when the cavalry came,
we ate their horses. Then, unfortunately, our bellies were filled
with bullet holes.
Pack the suitcases with white cans of corned beef—
when we leave, our hunger will go with us,
following behind, a dog with ribs like a harp.
Blue gourds glow and rattle like a two-man band:
Hotchkiss on backup vocals and Gatling on drums.
The rhythm is set by our boys dancing the warpath—
the meth 3-step. Grandmothers dance their legs off—
who now will teach us to stand?
We carry dimming lamps like god cages—
they help us to see that it is dark. In the dark our hands
pretend to pray but really make love.
Soon we’ll give birth to fists—they’ll open up
black eyes and split grins—we’ll all cry out.
History has chapped lips, unkissable lips—
he gave me a coral necklace that shines bright as a chokehold.
He gives and gives—census names given to Mojaves:
George and Martha Washington, Abraham Lincoln,
Robin Hood, Rip Van Winkle.
Loot bag ghosts float fatly in dark museum corners—
I see my grandfather’s flutes and rabbit sticks in their guts.
About the beautiful dresses emptied of breasts…
they were nothing compared to the emptied bodies.
Splintering cradleboards sing bone lullabies—
they hush the mention of half-breed babies buried or left on riverbanks.
When you ask about officers who chased our screaming women
into the arrowweeds, they only hum.
A tongue will wrestle its mouth to death and lose—
language is a cemetery.
Tribal dentists light lab-coat pyres in memoriam of lost molars—
our cavities are larger than HUD houses.
Some Indians’ wisdom teeth never stop growing back in—
we were made to bite back—
until we learn to bite first.
Mercy Songs to Melancholy
It’s the things I might have said that fester.
Clemence Dane
I found your blue suitcases
in my little sister’s closet,
navy socks with holes in the heels, packets of black
poplar seeds, damp underwear.
Please hang your charcoal three-piece suit somewhere
else. Please stop
dragging wire hangers across her arms and stomach.
~
Who mines her throat?
The picks spark, sparklers from a Fourth of July
when stars weren’t bits of glass.
The clanking is too many
pennies in each pocket
on a riverbank, telephones and wrong numbers.
Why won’t you put her on the phone? Why
did you cover the bedroom windows with yesterday’s
newspaper? The pages are yellow,
the stories are old.
~
There’s no such thing as gentle weeping.
Your gray guitar
is my sister—the hole in the chest
gives you both away.
~
I’ve seen you before
in the Picasso museum—all corners,
a plaza of bulls, banderillas. The grandstand full.
Old women, sisters begging for ears and tails, shaking
handkerchiefs—in the sky, glittering magpies,
razorblade ballads, and Ma Rainey records. These blues are
not so sweet as jelly beans. They are not small.
~
She is my sister, goddammit.
She is too young to sit at your table,
to eat from your dark pie.
If Eve Side-Stealer
& Mary Busted-Chest
Ruled the World
What if Eve was an Indian
& Adam was never kneaded
from the earth, Eve was Earth
& ribs were her idea all along?
What if Mary was an Indian
& when Gabriel visited her wigwam
she was away at a monthly WIC clinic
receiving eggs, boxed cheese
& peanut butter instead of Jesus?
What if God was an Indian
with turquoise wings & coral breasts
who invented a game called White Man Chess
played on silver boards with all white pieces
pawns & kings & only one side, the white side
& the more they won the more they were beaten?
What if the world was an Indian
whose head & back were flat from being strapped
to a cradleboard as a baby & when she slept
she had nightmares lit up by yellow-haired men & ships
scraping anchors in her throat? What if she wailed
a
ll night while great waves rose up carrying the fleets
across her flat back, over the edge of the flat world?
The Last Mojave Indian Barbie
Wired to her display box were a pair of one-size-fits-all-Indians stiletto moccasins, faux turquoise earrings, a dream catcher, a copy of Indian Country Today, erasable markers for chin and forehead tattoos, and two six-packs of mini magic beer bottles—when tilted up, the bottles turned clear, when turned right-side-up, the bottles refilled. Mojave Barbie repeatedly drank Ken and Skipper under their pink plastic patio table sets. Skipper said she drank like a boy.
Mojave Barbie secretly hated the color of her new friends’ apricot skins, how they burned after riding in Ken’s convertible Camaro with the top down, hated how their micro hairbrushes tangled and knotted in her own thick, black hair, which they always wanted to braid. There wasn’t any diet cola in their cute little ice chests, and worst of all, Mojave Barbie couldn’t find a single soft spot on her body to inject her insulin. It had taken years of court cases, litigation, letters from tribal council members, testimonials from CHR nurses, and a few diabetic comas just to receive permission to buy the never-released hypodermic needle accessory kit—before that, she’d bought most on the Japanese black market—Mattel didn’t like toying around with the possibility of a Junkie Barbie.
