Apple: List 3

What I want to know is: wouldn’t you believe
in a god who got tired of waiting for you to act, if you were
on the brink of genocide for 500 years, and because I know
this comic is from 1968, what I really want to know is:
when do I get to see the Indians as the superheroes, not
the super hapless, when are we the victors, not the victims?

After two months, when it's over, I will have
collected just shy of $900, half of which will help
pay the bills, half of which can be used
(somewhat) at my discretion...

But I kept each of those purchases, willing them to retain
more lasting value than their makers had in mind. Planned
obsolescence and scarcity were for people with a different
life from the one I’ve lived from ages one to twelve.

Maybe they knew how pathetic
it was to maintain an identity
whose alter ego was that
of a millionaire, for our house
was sure Stately Wayne Manor
in the most impervious of disguises.

This is
our nightly contract, our constant
solace for the wishes we don’t even
dare to articulate to each other for fear
they will go up in the same smoke we
pump into this room every day.

Rigorously study the novels of Stephen King, the lyrics

of Rush, Pink Floyd, Bowie, Beatles together, Beatles apart,
write your own similar work about authoritarian rule, isolation
and desperation, oblique and nameless love, the Monsters you
know, the Monsters you don’t, and never correct people who
read this work, when they assume you are telling it truthfully
from the Monster’s Point of View, that you are writing
the true story of your life.

Does she believe these sparks
are a premonition of the inevitable and shut her blanket off?

We share the toughness of having
to stand in the Poor Kids Free Lunch Ticket
Line at school every day, and we both embrace
mysterious aspects of songs we love together,
two Eclectic Music Indians in a Southern Rock
and Old Country and Western Loving Rez.

She laughs nonstop and calls me Geddy
after one buzzy night when I reveal
the epic Rush lyrics I have committed
wholly to memory, and I react the same
way at a crazy smoking air guitar solo
she grinds out on her front porch, as if
it were an arena stage, making her own
fake virtuoso sounds with her mouth,
not bothering to imitate any actual song.

Eventually, you will become what’s called
an “Indian writer,” but weirdly, when you make
this assertion, an unlikely percentage of people
hear you say “Native American storyteller”
instead, and they expect you to reveal life
lessons for children disguised as stories
about anthropomorphic animals, so here's
a story about siblings and reservations and
the culture of returns, but just in case
you can't hear me, let me tell you a little
something about robins and their young.

...and that night, we witness the first rising
corpses that would change the landscape
of horror movies, moving them from castles
to derelict farmhouses, at the woods' edge,
just like our own sagging-roofed houses.

Afternoon announcements remind us
to pick up regalia we were measured for,
weeks in advance.

Dreams of drawing with pen and quill, fade like a distant call,
as this life drains me of my will, and then my wherewithal.

Down frozen roads, you creep to my decrepit home.

On my new shirt, I smell the smoke
of kerosene burning late,
sooty dregs from when we were broke,
gone, I can carry some weight.