36: From

Stir stick.

My hand on; her black stomach is

South Sudanese, my two arms - Lakota, her body

is Africa, Zimbabwe; but her nose,

shaped in Damascus; we are many years

from here; I am a horse on the plain. Running fast,

unabashed. Wounded knees and all,

call me white, labeled. She is a

smooth ebony hand-me-down, wrought like steel,

soft for me - open for me.

Two legs fled across water to

save my caramel hide. My freckles are her dusting; Mother

would never have died with me in her; Father

could carry nothing but skin. White

would never have let me be. So now I am

the color of chase.

This woman beneath me, her brow - the world is born across it;

rivers run through its lines;

the crow's permanent foot tightens her face above

cheeky mountains, at her eyes. Her bald head -

her teeth, my reflection, sharp bone.

When my ancestors did the Ghost Dance, they

wore white. When her ancestors danced

they wore themselves, black; they wore white as ash.

Under this fertile

crescent

moon face,

my immigrant wife was somewhere else and here before me,

please say

where would you send her, where is she

from to you when you see

the map -

Of her body -

where is America; in me

there is only

this land

where she is

so free - to live