just a man
drag off a cigarette smirk
a walking shell game
snake in a can
so backwards in life
one questions
reports of his death
yet
he would crookedly smile
calling it
legend
just a man
drag off a cigarette smirk
a walking shell game
snake in a can
so backwards in life
one questions
reports of his death
yet
he would crookedly smile
calling it
legend
so he took her like an animal
but my father’s ghost wept
so she went to the men
like a good American
good people don’t want to believe
in visionaries good or bad
especially when you have red clay mud
starved stabbed scabbed over and over
on your grandmother’s dress from being raped just like her
from ft. Sumter to Wounded Knee
he’d never seen that color red come out of a living fertility statue
my veil is torn
the dog is dead
the natives have resumed their drumbeat
my parents were screaming
at each other
in Baptist curses
doors slamming
phones torn asunder
sounds of a home splitting apart at the roofbeams
my father throwing the floor model television out the front door
and one frightened sister
smuggling me out a bedroom window to another protective sister
that may not have all happened on the same night
it was so long ago &
this wasn’t constant
not your average weeknight at the Young’s house
but it’s always the first time
that matters most