The Navajo woman
below the entrance to Monument Valley
makes the bread unsmiling,
sells me a pair of earrings
with a minimum of talk.
You think anyone can have a bad day,
anyone can be tired.
Maybe it’s her period.
Maybe her car broke down
or her husband got busted in Kayenta.
But then you remember the girl
at the convenience store in Cameron,
and the one at the checkout stand
on the White Mountain Apache Reservation
and the one in the jewelry shop
at Taos Pueblo,
all with that impassive gaze
that accuses you just for being there,
for reminding them who they are:
so far from the center of things
they’ve become invisible,
like dangerous thoughts
pushed behind a wall of denial,
and in that look you can see
Sand Creek and Wounded Knee
and Washita and the Dry Tortugas,
the roll call of massacres
and broken treaties still clung to
over a hundred years later,
as if to let go would shame them,
would constitute an open betrayal,
and you want to say
Hey, it wasn’t ME,
I had nothing to do with it!
but you just pay for your fry bread,
your earrings, your groceries at White Mountain
and get in your car and go
because when you think about it—
all those pirate lives
you’ve lived, the pleasure
it gave you to destroy,
to play the Grand Inquisitor,
you realize the chances are
you did, you know,
you and all the rest of them.
