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04/2/26   
A keen smile and a sharp knife

The Girl Everyone Just Sort of Assumed Was Native American

bio/email
November 11, 2002
Here is a tale, well-learned, well-told,
about a girl of fifteen years old.
A girl nearly so old she could drive
with pretty brown skin and a look in her eye.
Between that and how she called the corn "maize"
everyone thought her and Indian babe.

Much props was she given, more than her share
for her leatherstocking dress and well-braided hair.
We thought her a mystic with powers bizarre
that she traveled by horse instead of a car;
wise and well-bred, with roots in the earth,
who knew what the wind and the rain were all worth;
that a teardrop would fall from one eye of brown
when someone tossed their litter around.

Maybe, someone said, she lived in a teepee
that's perfect for her, if not ideal for me.
It's possible someone has traded for deeds
this land all around for a necklace of beads.

So flooded with angst and white liberal guilt
we apologized for genocide and buildings we built,
but we found out later it was all for noit
and it turns out she actually came from Detroit!
She's black, not a Native, and now we have no doubt
a million other things to feel guilty about.



Quote of the Day
“They say you are what you eat, which is precisely why I ate fine young Bernard. Though I regret to report that I feel largely unchanged, except for the part about being in prison and having a permanent case of indigestion.”

-Percy "The Cannibal" Dandridge
Fortune 500 Cookie
Nobody knows the trouble you've seen, and you'll keep it that way if you know what's good for ya, bub. Try mixing your unique brand of illiterate rage with random fits of giggling this week. People hate it when you bring your own records to be played on the jukebox—it's just a soda joint, asshole. This week's lucky piercings: throat, spleen, tear duct, tooth.


Try again later.
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