13thWR

OGLALA

Not even the snake
she'd had tattooed on her left leg
years ago --

                     tail commencing
just below her ankle bone
and through a kind of viny
tattooed foliage winding red
and blue round and round
her calf and knee --
                             then thigh --
and ending up fork-tongued
not far below her waist --

could hold him--
                             because he
was authentic Native American
Indian and she wasn't --
                                              even
though
               when her father died,
between hymns she shook
an eagle feather at the seated
congregation and did a kind
of non-Episcopalian dance
that may have been a little
Indian.
               I don't know.

JULY 4

Very much for God
and some for a country he'd only read about in school
he was ready to say no
to her --

even though
before he saw her recumbent on a hand-worked quilt
beneath a Winesap tree
that was surely near the center
of her husband's orchard

he smelled the jasmine-scented lotion he'd learned at night
she rubbed into her loins
to cool them.

- Reid Bush