One block later, I had to hit my brakes when those same black guys jaywalked across the street in front of me. All of them stared me down and walked as slowly as possible through the crosswalk. I’d lived in this neighborhood for years and I’d often had this same encounter with young black men. It was some remnant of the warrior culture, I suppose.
When it had happened before, I had always made it a point to smile goofily and wave to the black men who were challenging me. Since they thought I was a dorky white guy, I’d behave like one. I’d be what they wanted me to be.
But this time, when those black men walked in slow motion in front of me, I did not smile or laugh. I just stared back at them. I knew I could hit the gas and slam into them and hurt them, maybe even kill them. I knew I had that power. And I knew that I would not use that power. But what about these black guys? What power did they have? They could only make me wait at an intersection. And so I waited. I waited until they walked around the corner and out of my vision. I waited until another driver pulled up behind me and honked his horn. I was supposed to move, and so I went.
Go, Ghost, Go
At this university upon a hill,
I meet a tenured professor
Who’s strangely thrilled
To list all of the oppressors—
Past, present, and future — who have killed,
Are killing, and will kill the indigenous.
O, he names the standard suspects—
Rich, white, and unjust—
And I, a red man, think he’s correct,
But why does he have to be so humorless?
And how can he, a white man, fondly speak
Of the Ghost Dance, the strange and cruel
Ceremony
That, if performed well, would have doomed
All white men to hell, destroyed their colonies,
And brought every dead Indian back to life?
The professor says, “Brown people
From all brown tribes
Will burn skyscrapers and steeples.
They’ll speak Spanish and carry guns and knives.
Sherman, can’t you see that immigration
Is the new and improved Ghost Dance?”
All I can do is laugh and laugh
And say, “Damn, you’ve got some imagination.
You should write a screenplay about this shit—
About some fictional city,
Grown fat and pale and pretty,
That’s destroyed by a Chicano apocalypse.”
The professor doesn’t speak. He shakes his head
And assaults me with his pity.
I wonder how he can believe
In a ceremony that requires his death.
I think that he thinks he’s the new Jesus.
He’s eager to get on that cross
And pay the ultimate cost
Because he’s addicted to the indigenous.
Bird-watching at Night
WHAT KIND OF BIRD is that?
An owl.
What kind of bird was that?
Another owl.
Oh, that one was too quick and small to be an owl. What was it?
A quick and small owl.
One night, when I was sixteen, I was driving with my girlfriend up on Little Falls Flat and this barn owl swooped down over the road, maybe fifty feet or so in front of us, and came flying straight toward our windshield. It was huge, pterodactyl-size, and my girlfriend screamed. And — well, I screamed, too, because that thing was heading straight for us, but you know what I did? I slammed on the gas and sped toward that owl. Do you know why I did that?
Because you wanted to play chicken with the owl?
Exactly.
So what happened?
When we were maybe a second from smashing into each other, that owl just flapped its wings, but barely. What’s a better word than flap? What’s a word that still means flap, but a smaller flap?
How about slant?
Oh, yes, that’s pretty good. So, like I was saying, as that owl was just about to smash into our windshield, it slanted its wings, and slanted up into the dark. And it was so friggin’ amazing, you know? I just slammed on the brakes and nearly slid into the ditch. And my girlfriend and I were sitting there in the dark with the engine tick, tick, ticking like some kind of bomb, but an existential bomb, like it was just measuring out the endless nothingness of our lives because that owl had nearly touched us but was gone forever. And I said something like, “That was magnificent,” and my girlfriend — you want to know what she said?
She said something like, “I’m breaking up with you.”
Damn, that’s exactly what she said. And I asked her, “Why are you breaking up with me?” And do you know what she said?
She said, “I’m breaking up with you because you are not an owl.”
Yes, yes, yes, and you know what? I have never stopped thinking about her. It’s been twenty-seven years, and I still miss her. Why is that?
Brother, you don’t miss her. You miss the owl.
After Building the Lego Star Wars Ultimate Death Star
How many planets do you want to destroy?
Don’t worry, Daddy, this is just a big toy,
And there is nothing more fun than making noise.
My sons, when I was a boy, I threw dirt clods
And snow grenades stuffed with hidden rocks, and fought
Enemies — other Indian boys — who thought,
Like me, that joyful war turned us into gods.
War Dances
1. My Kafka Baggage
A FEW YEARS AGO, after I returned from a trip to Los Angeles, I unpacked my bag and found a dead cockroach, shrouded by a dirty sock, in a bottom corner. “Shit,” I thought. “We’re being invaded.” And so I threw the unpacked clothes, books, shoes, and toiletries back into the suitcase, carried it out onto the driveway, and dumped the contents onto the pavement, ready to stomp on any other cockroach stowaways. But there was only the one cockroach, stiff and dead. As he lay on the pavement, I leaned closer to him. His legs were curled under his body. His head was tilted at a sad angle. Sad? Yes, sad. For who is lonelier than the cockroach without his tribe? I laughed at myself. I was feeling empathy for a dead cockroach. I wondered about its story. How had it got into my bag? And where? At the hotel in Los Angeles? In an airport baggage system? It didn’t originate in our house. We’ve kept those tiny bastards away from our place for fifteen years. So what had happened to this little vermin? Did he smell something delicious in my bag — my musky deodorant or some crumb of chocolate Power Bar — and climb inside, only to be crushed by the shifts of fate and garment bags? As he died, did he feel fear? Isolation? Existential dread?
2. Symptoms
Last summer, in reaction to various allergies I was suffering from, defensive mucous flooded my inner right ear and confused, frightened, untied, and unmoored me. Simply stated, I could not fucking hear a thing from that side, so I had to turn my head to understand what my two sons, ages eight and ten, were saying.
“We’re hungry,” they said. “We keep telling you.”
They wanted to be fed. And I had not heard them.
“Mom would have fed us by now,” they said.
Their mother had left for Italy with her mother two days ago. My sons and I were going to enjoy a boys’ week, filled with unwashed socks, REI rock wall climbing, and ridiculous heaps of pasta.