Monday, December 03, 2007

WHITE CLAY PIGEONS

In White Clay, Nebraska
I go shopping with my sister
for groceries
“It’s cheaper here…”
she says,
“…Because no one wants to come here.”

upon checking out
the buzzard lady
scowls at the food stamp card
ready to pick
the stereotypes from our bones
but then she smiles
at my niece’s pretty little face
and leaves us quietly alone

outside the store
a broken wing
Indian
stumbles to our car door
"Cousin, cousin,
can you spare me some change
a quarter, a dime, anything?"

"No I don't have any money"
my sister angrily says,
loading up the groceries
But then the wounded thing
comes around to my end
I quickly fish out
what change I have
and chuck it at him
like bread crumbs

because I know
how close you can come
to flying
out there
in the real white world
I know how easy it is
to spread your wings
to want to soar
golden
and majestic
like the white men
only to crumble
into pieces
when someone shoots
down your dreams

in White Clay
the drunks pick each other up
when one of them
has fallen
So many shattered
So few that matter

Monday, March 12, 2007

*NOT CHINESE

Small towns seem to duplicate themselves
As ignorance shits out ignorance
Making a franchise out of my hell.
“No, I’m not going to steal from your store!”
I want to yell to the old white lady
Eyeing me from behind the counter.
“After all…that’s what your taxes are for.”
And I know that I should let karma do its job,
But I’m not that kind of Indian anyway.
I’m the one with the feather, not the dot.
Who am I though to say what I want to say?
I’m just one of those invisible type of minorities.
At least that’s what I heard,
That’s what I’m called on network TV.

“No Ma’m I’m not Chinese.”
I tell the white waitress working at the Oriental buffet.
“But hand me some chopsticks please…
…and I’ll be on my way.”
They call me Native American now
Because India holds the real Indians.
But it turns out that I’m just what people think I am
But what I am to them doesn’t make any sense.
But no, I’m not Chinese.
Or a Mexican-Redman-crossed the Bering Strait-type of Homo sapien.
But please hand me some chopsticks,
And I’ll play along
--With these know-it-all pricks.

*Originally appeared in
Red Ink Magazine

Coypright JoelWaters 2002.
*JAPANESE GARDENS

In the Japanese gardens
I wait for the H-Bomb
to drop.
I feel like
the little trees
they have cut and trimmed
into a forced bonsai.
As fake as the bamboo
house that I sit in.
Concentrating,
like the camps
the U.S. government
put our people in.
First the Indians,
and then Japanese Americans.
Preserving cultures
by putting up a fence.
Keeping it safe from us
as though we plan
to hara-kiri.
We should be so lucky.

Stone and cement
lanterns
light the way
of a dim view.
As though to say,
“Hiroshima
was not bombed into ash.”
Like the tree
they have planted.
In the garden,
where every culture
is perfectly positioned.
An origami America
that nobody wants to unfold.


*Originally Appeared in EATING FIRE, TASTING BLOOD.
Copyright Thunder's Mouth Press 2006.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

*UPDATE*

just got news three more of my poems will be appearing in a journal
called Yellow Medicine Review
put out by Minnesota State University.
it will feature my poems:
BEING WHITE
THE GREAT AMERICAN POW WOW
SUGARWATER.
you can find them all here for a limited time
and after that well, you can check them out in the journal above.