carrying in the pocket of my winter coat
A tiny wooden cross….

gifted by an artisan at a local mall….

he refused any money I offered….
his eyes clouding over as he spoke of his

home….

Inscribed on the tiny wooden cross

Gaza…..

Entities
The war poems
11/22/22

   

   

above the fort robinson gate in Nebraska in 1878
the white soldiers hung a banner
The trail of Cheyenne blood where they attempted escape
Still visible in the snow….

above the bloody moccasin tracks
Where my relatives and their babies fell…

The banner flapping in Americas
winter wind…

Peace on earth
Goodwill to men…

Dec 23.23
From the stronghold

   

   

here is the place where the ones who have vanished awaken us
A dead lover whispered to me

This is the place where dreams come to die she said
A veil of ashes falling through her voice….

My grandfather told me removing a screwdriver from the heart of a river
You are surrounded by eternity….

Whispering a prayer away from men my grandmother spoke the word veho….

she looked at me lighting
a camel cigarette

The words they use have dead eyes….

memory is the shadow that stays…

For bob and Bertha cook
My grandparents
For pat
veho: white man or black widow spider
Both territorial, deadly.

   

Lance Henson is a poet of the Cheyenne nation of Oklahoma. He has fifty-one books of poetry published and translated into more than twenty languages, mostly recently Voyager: For the Cheyenne (Mauna Kea Edizioni, 2020). He lives with his wife in Bologna, Italy. See also petrichor one, fourteen, twenty, and twenty-two.
NEXT >
< BACK
INDEX