I was going to shift a little bit.
I'm trying to figure out how to make Indian School Night Song
Blues relate to climate change.
I can make up a story for how that works.
There was a big climate change in 1492.
You think about climate, it does begin with thoughts.
You know?
You think about all of it, it's that kind of matter,
like thought matter.
If you think about it, there was a big change.
So that it is a big change when your children are raised up
like she was talking in a hogan, in a house that
is a place situated according to with the door to the east
or with certain star patterns, so that there's
a sense of meaning about where you live,
where you place yourself and the sky and the Earth,
to being in a dormitory at Indian School
drunk on restriction because you were drinking.
But then people always felt sorry for you
and would bring you more to drink.
So this is a little--
it's more of a monologue.
It's a poetic monologue of a girl
at Indian School, who is they're all on restriction
at Indian School.
And she's a little high.
And she's telling the truth about what she's seeing.
Indian School Night Song Blues.
I call to order the meeting of girls on restriction
at Indian School, locked up in the dorm.
We broke the rules.
Now it's Saturday night.
No booze.
You lose.
Music courtesy of KOMA straight from Oklahoma City.
Across the plain of tears and fears
and over the mountains to hear the city different.
Indian School.
Hippie crash.
Let's dance.
Where's the dorm matron?
Hide the stash.
We all admire Marlene.
She's one of the best.
She's Jackson Pollock in a dress.
She only leaves the painting studio for sleep or work.
And on Sunday, she sneaks out to the Indian hospital
on the other side of campus.
She took me once.
The children clapped and laughed when she came in.
She brought them gifts, all her desserts
saved up for a week, crayons, paper, and tiny fans.
We hid when the staff came in.
They eventually threw her out.
The hospital carried no insurance
to cover the harm she might do.
And Venus, now, that's a name and a history.
One parent from the north on the back
of a horse, the other from the south over the back of a river.
Venus is a singer, a real singer.
Each singer has a particular gift.
Some grow plants.
Some call helpers.
Some heal the sick.
Some make the dead rise up and dance.
When Venus sings, we enter into a trance.
We no longer hurt from freak chants.
You're going to make it to Broadway, either New
York or Albuquerque.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, you're
as silent as a mouse in the corner of the dining
hall chewing on stale American bread.
We don't know who you are or where you've been.
Maybe you're dead to this reality.
None of us are coping well with the BIA.
We've read the reports.
Doesn't play well with others.
Won't speak or look us in the eyes.
Talks to ghosts.
We hear what they're really saying.
We have the guns and money.
And we have your children.
Mary's spirit is mostly underground with clay.
When she's with us, she roams the halls
in precise eyeglasses, bell bottoms laced tight,
and a stack of poetry in her arms.
T.S. Eliot, she says, needed to put his hands in clay.
She reads him every day, perched with her books
outside the powwow circle.
Where's Kip?
We can't find Kip anywhere.
She's not in the laundry room practicing
powwow in her underwear.
She's not on the roof where she sneaks her smoke
or not in the tent she's made of government-issued bedspreads,
where she sketches high fashion of Indians in Paris.
Here comes Kip with a knife.
And there she goes, no top or bottom, only fury
whirling in a spiritual nudity.
She's headed out into the snow.
She's what happens when somebody hurts the baby.
We can corner our sheets, so a quarter
spins, and know the drill for shots, debugging, and towels.
We have a chance.