I'm going to read a few.
The next two I'm going to read is from "She Had Some Horses."
And then most of the rest of the poems
will be from a new manuscript called, "In Mad Love and War."
I think that might be what it comes down to.
We'll see, I guess, eventually.
This poem is called "New Orleans."
And I wrote it--
it was, well, the first and only time I went to New Orleans.
And I'm Creek, from Oklahoma.
I was born in Oklahoma, but my Creek side of the family
is originally from Alabama.
And this was the closest, at that point,
that I had come to that homeland.
So you better bet I was out there looking and walking
around the streets, looking to see what had happened.
I'm still trying to figure out what happened.
And so I was walking around New Orleans,
and I walked to the Mississippi River
and sat there for a long time.
Rivers talk.
And I learned quite a bit.
And I started thinking and remembering
the story about this guy named DeSoto.
And I heard this story when I was
in about third or fourth grade during some kind of history.
And what I remembered-- which may not be what happened--
is that DeSoto--
of course DeSoto was looking for gold, they still are.
And he was either killed and his body thrown in the Mississippi
River or he was drowned there.
And I think the Chickasaws or the Choctaws did it.
But I used my poetic license and I
said the Creeks did it because I knew somehow
they had a hand in it.
And so this is "New Orleans."
This is the South.
I look for evidence of other Creeks, for remnants of voices
or for tobacco brown bones to come wandering down Conti
street, Royal, or Decatur.
Near the French market, I see a blue horse
caught frozen in stone in the middle of a square.
Brought in by the Spanish on an endless ocean voyage,
he became mad and crazy.
They caught him in blue rock, said, don't talk.
I know it wasn't just a horse that went crazy.
Nearby is a shop with ivory and knives.
There are red rocks.
The man behind the counter has no idea
that he is inside magic stones.
He should find out before they destroy him.
These things have memory, you know?
I have a memory.
It swims deep in blood, a delta in the skin.
It swims out of Oklahoma, deep the Mississippi River.
It carries my feet to these places, the French Quarter,
stale rooms, the sun behind thick and moist clouds.
And I hear boats hauling themselves up
and down the river.
My spirit comes here to drink.
Blood as the undercurrent.
There are voices buried in the Mississippi mud.
There are ancestors and future children
buried beneath the current stirred up
by pleasure boats going up and down.
There are stories here made of memory.
I remember DeSoto.
He is buried somewhere in this river, his bones sunk
like the golden treasure he traveled
half the Earth to find.
Came looking for gold cities, for shining streets
of beaten gold to dance on with silk ladies.
He should have stayed home.
Creeks knew of him for miles before he came into town,
dreamed of silver blades and crosses,
and knew he was one of the ones who
yearned for something his heart wasn't big enough to handle.
And DeSoto thought it was gold.
The Creeks lived in Earth towns, not gold, spun children, not
gold.
That's not what DeSoto thought he wanted to see.
The Creeks knew it, and drowned him in the Mississippi River
so he wouldn't have to drown himself.
Maybe his body is what I am looking for as evidence
to know in another way that my memory is alive.
But he must have got away, somehow,
because I have seen New Orleans, the lace and silk buildings,
trolley cars on beaten silver paths,
graves that rise up out of soft Earth in the rain,
shops that sell Black mammy dolls holding white babies.
And I know I have seen DeSoto, having
a drink on Bourbon Street, mad and crazy,
dancing with a woman as gold as the river bottom.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
And DeSoto is still around.