After Sherman Alexie’s “The Powwow at the End of the World”

Talk to me about forgiveness
while bones rattle under the waters of the Middle Passage

Talk to me about forgiveness
while my brother dies under your gun, under your knee, at the end of your rope

Talk to me about forgiveness
while the prosperity gospel church burns slave sweat for incense
and I choose whether to live in poverty or die in prison

Talk to me about forgiveness
while Manifest Destiny grinds us all under its iron heel

Talk to me about forgiveness
while you lecture my sisters that a woman’s true crowning glory is whiteness

Talk to me about forgiveness
while you poison my children with factory effluent, freeway exhaust, and lead paint

Talk to me about forgiveness
while skeletons stalk my neighborhood and the hospitals turn us away from full wards

Talk to me about forgiveness
while the monster you created and named capitalism writhes and bites and devours you, its children, and us, its victims, indifferently and alike

Oh, I will forgive, I will forgive, when the monster has eaten its own tail and swallows itself and spits up a better world – I will forgive, if only you can find the grace to stay behind in the bowels of the beast when the meek and the wretched go forth hand in hand.

Books Available
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside