SURVIVORMAN
bySherman Alexie
Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. Some can withstand any horror
While others will easily surrender
To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.
In Utah, one man carried another
Man on his back like a conjoined brother
And crossed twenty-five miles of desert
To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?
Do you think you could be that good and strong?
Yes, yes,you think, but you’re probably wrong.
I Would Steal HorsesbySherman Alexie
for you, if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father, the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born
and where he will die sometime by dark.
I am afraid of his hands, which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.
I would sign treaties for you, take
every promise as the last lie, the last
point after which we both refuse the exact.
I would wrap us both in old blankets
hold every disease tight against our skin.
Evolution
bySherman AlexieBuffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservationright across the border from the liquor storeand he stays open 24 hours a day, 7 days a weekand the Indians come running in with jewelrytelevision sets, a VCR, a full-length beaded buckskin outfitit took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. Buffalo Billtakes everything the Indians have to offer, keeps itall catalogued and filed in a storage room. The Indianspawn their hands, saving the thumbs for last, they pawntheir skeletons, falling endlessly from the skinand when the last Indian has pawned everythingbut his heart, Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty buckscloses up the pawn shop, paints a new sign over the oldcalls his venture THE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTUREScharges the Indians five bucks a head to enter.
House Fires bySherman Alexie
The night my father broke
the furniture and used the pieces
to build a fire, my mother tore me
from my bed at 3 a.m. Eyes and mouth
wide with whiskey, she told me
we were leaving that place
and would never come back.
We drove for hours, under the gates
of this reservation, as she recanted
years of life with my father,
the man who pulled our house from its foundations
and sent us all tumbling down
to a café in Colville. We took penance
in the breakfast special, she told me
forgave all our sins. We drove back
to my father, gathering ash
in his hands, planning to bury it all
in the graves we had chosen for each other.
Poverty of Mirrors
bySherman Alexie
You wake these mornings alone and nothing
can be forgiven; you drink the last
swallow of warm beer from the can
beside the bed, tell the stranger sleeping
on the floor to go home. It's too easy
to be no one with nothing to do, only
slightly worried about the light bill
more concerned with how dark day gets.
You walk alone on moist pavement wondering
what color rain is in the country.
Does the world out there revolve around rooms
without doors or windows? Centering the mirror
you found in the trash, walls seem closer
and you can never find the right way
out, so you open the fridge again
for a beer, find only rancid milk and drink it
whole. This all tastes too familiar.
What the Orphan Inherits