By Michael H. Brownstein
Locked up knocked up trespassed vandalized and varnished,
Plum River curves into Manitoba earth easy as a pout, a frown, gimme tears.
Large mosquitoes thick with blood sprout from heavy grass like so many leopard frogs.
Who is this place where no one smiles?
Who is this place where no one knows thank you, please, excuse me?
Riverton, Heckla Village, Gull Point, Dolphyn. Yes, especially Dolphyn, home of
vandalized graves and garbaged piles of discarded wreathes.
Inuit’s who gave my wife the recipe for frybread, Hear me speak.
Everything will be righted. Time is just a hesitation.
We will lead the herds of Europeans in huge ships across the Atlantic, the Pacific, the southern waters.
Fox, moose, black bear will multiply. Bison will multiply. Hawk, eagle, fresh water pelican will
multiply.Everything will find a way back home.
| Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
I know those mosquitos from western Canada and Alaska. Often torpid in the cold, failing to bite, but swarming anyway. Just nostalgically hoping I too, will be a part of everything, and find a way back home. There's the emotion all good art should engender, as yours always does. Thank you again sir.
ReplyDeleteThe poem seems a damnation of transgression, with a not altogether reassuring promise of its righting. Time may seem to balance things out in the long term, but the suffering is real in the short.
ReplyDeleteMy family and I have been with and around many native people and we have seen so much that should not be seen, let alone tolerated. Thanksgiving is a time for thanks, but its origin mythology leaves too much fact out and lets too much fiction in..
DeleteRoger,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your kind words.