Here comes dawn and nothing rosy
about her fingers — stove-flame
blue and some hand must’ ve turned
the burner on: the little tongues
licking, gradually, the teapot of  us
aboil, cooking off a giardia
of  stars, the dregs of our night-
mares. Who will place his fingers
in the nailmarks, come near enough
to smell death in its hair? Already we’ ve
some of us slid back into our bodies,
restirring the air our breaths stirred
all night — whoever we are while
we sleep — and gone about believing

My pa he didn’ t go to town
Last evening after tea,
But got a book and settled down
As comfy as could be.
I’ ll tell you I was offul glad
To have my pa about
To answer all the things I had
Been tryin’ to find out.

Surfeit of distance and the wracked mind waiting,
nipping at itself, snarling inwardly at strangers.
If I had a car in this town I'd
rig it up with a rear bumper horn,
something to blast back at the jackasses
who honk the second the light turns green.
If you could gather up all the hornhonks
of just one day in New York City,
tie them together in a big brassy knot
high above the city and honk
them all at once it would shiver
the skyscrapers to nothingness, as if
they were made of sand, and usher

Two hundred seventy
Ghost Dancers died dreaming
That humanity would drown
In a flood of White sins.

Then the renewed earth
Would reclaim city and town,
Leaving only Ghost Dancers
And those who lived by nature’ s laws.

History books say the threat is gone.
The Ghost Dance died with the ancestors —
Wovoka and his sacred dream
Were destroyed.

Each time it rains,
I go out to the sidewalk,
Where the tree roots
Have broken the concrete
Listening to the water’ s whispering: