BLACK KNIFE: poems by Stuart Y. Hoahwah; Number One - Native Writers Chapbook Series II [a machine-readable transcription]

Saline

What can be said for Saline County-a crow's call

streaking through dreary country

with a little gray sky locked to its side.

Through the architecture of pine needles, sunlight breaks itself

but laughter blows in. It is a wedding in the trees.

Like dropped corpses along Steel Bridge Road,

dilapidated pumpkin patches.

A meth lab sings, hollers

from the vortex of woods and echoes;

toothless with diamonds

Drum-set crashing down the hill,

it’s the sound of Pink Whiskers from childhood...

Sunset is a woman after love making,

who gradually loses the high coloration of her body

and falls to sleep.

II

Lake Winona is man-made.

Headlights, orange ribbons; chains;

sunken bulldozers rising up.

Water, dark as un-oxidized blood

pink bauxite grottos swallowing virgins.

Used nights are dumped from the cliffs

and recycled into lake bottom.

The lake turns over.

There’s morning

in the eyes of the houseboat cook

strangling chickens.

III

The town of Benton is a courthouse lawn and hanging tree.

God is everywhere

even in the cheese dip served at El Cena Casa.

Jesus is the waitress

with big tits and psoriasis on the elbows.

IV

In Bryant, boys neither go to heaven nor hell

but into ghost stories.

My life was a Thanksgiving coloring book,

everyone greeted this Indian with roasted turkey

and cornbread dressing.

But Bryant lure boys to the railroad tracks;

the stars,

songs,

marijuana.

Blood and Budweiser flowed.

Tattered trash bags, their banners...

Bryant repelled whatever down-poured

-it was my shelter.

Covering me

-it was the blackest gravel.

Preparation

Part and grease your hair

down with un-baptized fat.

The part, paint with red lipstick.

Dip your sharp lethal

stir and see your future

in a puddle of skunk’s blood.

To the white dawn sing

anthems of the Black Knife

Fraternal Society

To become the blessed

make your shield like the sun

blinding when hung in a tree.

Kill a young male crow

stuff its body with sage

this is your holy emblem.

By night, live this month

eat 65 watt bulbs

it’s the Moon of Shattered Glass.

In the zigzag voice

of lightning and hailstorms

tell of your war deeds and death.

Proverb the winged snake

Swallowing the young bird

Tuibitsi kana tua.

Comancheria

Good-bye God, I am leaving for the Staked Plains.

It is truly a wolf’s road

spreading the sky open with red-stone rockets and powwows.

Bitterroot taste to the air oozing

through swirling locust.

Double-barreled sunset

the ashen face

the snake emblem.

There is no allegiance

even though part of my body belongs to the Comanche

and part to the Arkansas River.

The rest, Coyote holds close to his heart,

a handful of dirty pennies and blood pressure medicine.

Night is being hauled in, piece by piece, on 18-wheelers.

Owls are hooting now and the prairie is dreaming.

Dreams carve into the treetops

and the black scarfed numupe throws pine cones at the moon.

To sleep like this

I don’t consider myself a wolf.

After Dr. Armon Kracpot's highly publicized lecture: Origins and Placement of Southern Plains Oral Traditions.

We kidnapped that scholar of Native American literature
and threw him in the old tack room.
He was bound in duct tape
and razor wired his bar stool.
He became lethargic, we tipped over the stool.
In a puddle of urine and blood, he lied there
moaning, "I don't deserve this....I don't deserve this..."
Like in cartoons
where the wolf steps on the yard rake
I stepped on his bar stool and popped him right up,
turned on the T.V. and gently placed the barrel
in between his thick soft lips
letting it slip into his fat beautiful mouth,
cocked the hammer back.
I whispered into his ear,
"Watch this Looney Tunes cartoon:"

“Two bands were living together in a large camp. One band was on the east side; the other on the west. Each had its own chief. Every night the young boys were out playing games-racing, and so forth. They were having a kicking game; they kicked each other. One boy kicked another in the stomach so hard he died from it. That boy, played by Wile E. Coyote, who was killed was from the West camp. He was the son of a chief. When this thing happened, the West camp cried all night. In the East camp it was silent. Next day, they buried the body. The boy's father, the chief played by Porky Pig, had his crier go around announcing that there would be a big fight to see which camp was best so as to settle the question of his son's death. There was big excitement. Both sides had good warriors. The East camp ran to its horses. "If they really mean what they, they will kill us," they cried. The two sides lined up, and the chiefs met in the center. Then Bugs Bunny, as an old man, from the East camp came up into the center. He wept and told them it wasn't right for them to fight among themselves like that. They took pity on him. Then other old men came out and gathered with him. "You have plenty of enemies to fight," they cried. "These were just boys playing a game. Don't take this thing so seriously. You are setting a bad example for the children. Whatever this chief wants to keep the peace, we'll do it." That chief called it off. He said he did not realize what he was doing. So the East camp brought horses and other things. After that the chief had his announcer tell the people it was time to move camp. "We have had bad luck here. There has been hard feeling." While they were still there, smallpox broke out. Then they broke up. One group went north; those are the Shoshones. The other group went west, which are the Comanche.”

BOOM

Comanche Bands

Penathuka

Quickstingers; raiders

with honey-eating beauty

southernmost words

Yappithuka

Root eating drifters

drove out the Plains Apache

into headless stars

Nokoni

Those who often move

sloven in their camp habits

Pease River gypsies

Kutsuthuka

Mexicans fear her

the Sun Oracle and the

bear claws of her son

Quohada

On treeless staked plains

sewn antelope parasols

Bonnets. Crow feathers.

Tenawa

The downstream people

children of chief El Sordo

and his Caddo wife

Tanima

They eat liver raw

carry black crooked lances

and fight without clothes

Woi ah

Maggots on penis

marry incestuously

maggots on penis

Mu Tsane

Dark undercut banks

overhanging cliff campsite

annihilated

NumaKiowa

Shields hung up in trees

bells, streamers, yellowhammers

red, green quarter moons

Secretly Looking for Something

It is a custom among the Comanche to count back

five generations to an ancestor or ancestress,

that ancestor is considered as a brother or sister.

Tall ships on crashing tables of green seas,

warped sail masts seasoned in Spanish heat.

Luggage and family lunged toward new lives

across cream rifts of the ocean

to where Christian names cease, his family

sailed from Castile Spain and settled a vast ranch,

luscious valley land, in North Mexico.

His Spanish name, Sebastian Ramirez;

eight years old when he was captured along

with his little sister, Constantina.

They were warned not to beyond the fence,

to stay close to the villa, but one morn

They noticed something round and metallic

in the grass at the edge of the barrack fence

encircling the immediate five

acres of the villa. Brooding each other,

boy and girl crept to the shiny object.

Both were hesitant, keeping an eye on it

and their surroundings for safety's sake.

They hovered over, over their treasure

admiring it, sparkling, sparkling

in different colors and beautifully strange.

Boy slowly bent down to claim his prize

hearing his heavy breath and heartbeat.

Out of morning's stillness, a Comanche

appeared, his horse galloping at full pace.

The warrior, painted in black with red streaks

under his eyes and along his arms and legs.

He leaned to one side and swept up the boy.

Another horseman, painted half rock-red

and half yellow, captured the girl with stealth.

The two Comanche horsemen, their captives

across their laps, hurdled through the orchards

fences, and stole away into the hills.

Hooves stained with Mexican fruit and fresh blood.

In the overgrowth, their raiding party          (no stanza break)

waited for them, upon our arrival

the warriors began singing victory songs.

In celebration of the horsemen's return,

a captured baby from a near-by village

was thrown up into the air and shot at.

They rode non-stop for days until they reached

a large sandy river, known as Pasi Ono.

The party melted into smaller groups.

The children went with their captors northwest.

All that time, boy and girl had not said a word

to each other or pleaded, out of fear.

They were marooned on the backs of horses.

Once past the river the party relaxed.

That night they stopped and camped. The children fed

on freshly cooked antelope and persimmon.

Constantina finally broke down and cried,

boy's head filled with bizarre trails and dark streams.

It was months before the group reached the main camps

of the strong Yappithuka Comanches.

The boy and girl were taken to the family

of their captor, Poho-kwasucut (Medicine Shirt Possessor)

younger brother of chief Tabe-nanaka (Hears the Sunrise)

both members of the Widyu or "Awl" clan

known for fighting with each other, scratching.

For days Sebastian and Constantina

stayed inside the lodge with one hand tied down

to a stake so not to run off, for the boy

almost succeeded once. He kept looking,

examining any possibilities.

One of the family members, an old deaf woman,

fed them. The little sister kept crying non-stop

all this time and refused to eat at all.

It has been said the girl cried so much

Poho-kwasucut took her back down south,

but there are also stories of her

being traded off to another tribe,

and stories of her being killed outright.

Boy never wanted to ask such questions.

Sebastian stayed on with his captor.

He was adopted and given the name,

Ho-ahwah or "Secretly looking for something."

Ode to Loobey

God, we used to pee on that kid.

Jimmy Loobey, a name

that could only come from the South.

Flaming-haired stepchild of Coyote,

we feared would ride his bicycle

to our houses at mid-night,

break into our bedroom windows

and exchange places with us.

And with our own underwear and rusty bicycle chains,

he'd tie us down to the urinal depths of humiliation.

Jimmy Loobey, the Comanche word ranging in meaning:

from an in-grown toenail

to your braids cut off

and mouth rinsed out with bleach;

from finding a strand of hair

in your fry bread

to burying a grocery sack of stillborn kittens;

from losing your favorite turquoise ring

to losing your virginity without a condom

to a girl with line-backer shoulders and bad acne.

That name has become a song throughout the years.

The death song for both Comanche and animal alike,

echoing from ditches and top of trees

being whispered in the dark corners of bedtime...

Jimmy Loobey, the name for all children's nightmares.

Craft

Hell hangs implements here.

Lumber. Woodshed. Ft. Sill.

Southern Plains.

There’s no shade but under the drill bit.

I will furnish chairs, dining tables,

axe handles to the officer’s wives.

Comanche-crafted furniture,

if shattered into a million pieces,

would drag itself

across the floor into a frantic

huddle and fit back together

with the precision of a carpenter

two millimeters away from madness.

The foreman doesn’t know what to think.

Watching.

He stands there throwing shadow and light

with the brim of his work hat

flapping around

like the wounded trying to land.

The True Story of Superman

He wears Comanche colors.

Red represents Oklahoma and blood, blue--the sky and bottled water,

and yellow--his power or Sun medicine.

The "S" stands for Snake, the sign for Comanche in Indian sign language.

He's the lost son of the wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Pohosucut

and descendant of the legendary warrior, Poho-kwasucut

who possessed a medicine shirt that was bulletproof.

Superman's parents were high school sweethearts at Ft. Sill Indian School

and married soon after graduation. Two years later they had twins,

big boy and girl babies with rolls upon rolls of fat.

The girl supposedly lived only seven days.

After baby Superman's first birthday, his parents died in a plane crash.

A thunderstorm rolled in.

Lightning struck one of the propeller engines catching it on fire.

Knowing they would not survive the flight, Edwin and Lela put their son

in one of their Samsonite suitcases. Not wanting him to die by fire;

Edwin tossed the suitcase as hard as a loving father could out of the small plane.

The state police report stated flames at the crash site were so intense;

Edwin’s gold wedding band had melted off his finger.

The coroner identified the bodies by dental records.

There was a joint funeral with star blankets draped all over Permansu Cemetery.

So many flowers; pedals blew across Southwestern Oklahoma for weeks.

As for Superman in the suitcase,

so aerodynamic, soaring like a futuristic bird with a cubic-shaped contrail.

He landed safely in the sand dunes miles away.

A childless Mennonite family, the Chebatahs, from Dirty Shame found him.

They fell in love with his beauty and adopted the baby-Superman.

For his resilience and survival they named him,

Kutso-ekavit (Velroy) Stonewall Chebatah.

The Verbal Map of Velroy, the Medicine Man From Dirty Shame, OK

Omen-birth,

twins on the outskirts of electricity.

To a legacy of wolves, the female was thrown.

Boy was kept

and named after the ancient cultural hero,

Kutso-ekavit, "Red Buffalo."

We called him Velroy for short.

Once the ancient hero saved the Comanche people from a witch

who flapped illness and death with her raggedy shawl.

With a hook of his powerful horns, the buffalo tossed her up to the moon.

You can still see the witch shaking her fists back at Earth.

At age 10, head-first,

Velroy fell into Cache Creek.

It was mythical in the reeds.

Velroy surfaced, singing in Comanche:

Plains were spinning Southern style.

Black Mesa skipped

cedar shattered over Palo Duro.

I saw the ghost sickness

of the famous Parker family.

I heard the droning in the shrine

of Black Coyote.

The birthday party on the dirt road to Cache;

Velroy cartwheels into Deyo Cemetery, purple streamers falling.

With owl feathers and some Velvet Underground

he tried for the Bradshaw kid who died six months before.

Velroy said a bone prayer, held the dark in conversation of a dreamer's cult.

Its okay, you are beautiful, sing to me beautiful one...

2004. Battle for Dirty Shame.

Two medicine men jousted on Main Street,

the Cheyenne called Hippy,

and Velroy at opposite ends of the street.

Hippy lit a cigar

and blew smoke to the East four times.

Velroy hailed to the sunset

in his Dingo boots with the bulldog-nose tips.

The citizens followed the blood trails

running down the streets,

up walls, over rooftops

splashing onto the stars.

(Ouija Board Blues

By Velroy)

My skull sits on the desk of the head

of Anthropology.

Brain-package in the flower pot.

-Widow Smith

My rib cage, a bleached and glassy scorpion hotel

Trigger finger plucking bowels

in a vulture

My feet, still in boots          under red swings buried in the yard

The picnic of shadows

Witch's          mouth

The trick is keeping mefrom piecing back

Red River

I

...makes a noisy entry into Texas

II

Four mountains

Four creeks

Four forts

Four suns

Four seasons

Four nations- Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho

Four kinds of victims- Mexican women, U.S. Cavalry, white children, Texas Rangers

III

At Yellow House Canyon

the river turns tight.

Talons skim the water,

waves confirm dawn.

With white sheets tied around their waists

Tonkawa scouts cannibalistically count out

a bag of small left hands.

Seated in a silver concho saddle,

Death's dirty sergeant lights up

his ceremonial breathing leaf.

IV

Where Cache Creek empties into the Red River

is a nerve center of war.

There Velroy fought the gruesome sisterhood:

Cholera, Plague, and Smallpox.

They tried to strip his body of carbon-14 atoms.

Velroy, protector of wolves

and knowledgeable in the Flying Crane Technique

of Kung-Fu,

drop-kicked Plague in the windpipe

simultaneously breaking her neck

in three places.

He tricked Smallpox with her own taboo.

By passing some milk through a hole

in an oak tree,

it made her vomit up her own stomach.

Velroy quickly buried it,

turning Smallpox into a tree.

Cholera challenged Velroy

to a showdown in break-dancing.

It took place on top of the creek.

While Cholera was doing a head spin,

Velroy pulled out the cardboard from under her.

Cholera dropped into the river and drowned.

V

She sits in the deep part,

a cinema of silver scales.

Her hair moves like meadow grass in flood water.

VI

At the Red River

Ute chief cuts my guitar strings

Ute women love Punk

VII

Begin radio transmission:

Fox 5 to Eagle's Nest over

Roger Fox 5...what is your position...over

Grim.....members of the Black Knife Society

crossed the south fork of the river

on horseback in a V-formation.

They possess gear

simultaneously musical and military:

a stretched skin to serve as

both shield and timbrel,

and a club, sword, or lance

that is also a drumstick.................[gun fire]

Eagle's Nest to Fox 5 over....

I repeat...Eagle's Nest to Fox 5 are you there over....

I repeat...Fox 5 are you there over...

End radio transmission

Hoahwah's Account of the Lost Valley Fight

Across the timber, the moon tracked in blood.

The Texan's intestines, strung out across Night,

melted in the tall grass.

The horse of the dead coachman asked for me.

We journeyed back, kicking at the thick ribs of night.

From horseback, men tossed curly scalps back and forth.

Kot-see was seated up in the saddle-- tied down at the wrists.

By pulling on the ropes from time to time

members of Black Knife Society balanced his tattered body.

His forehead touched the sky,

gunshot-face leaked worms.

We sang victory songs,

dreamed of our women laughing

and the enemies' women crying.

Excerpts from a Comanche Scout's Journal

May 4th-

Across the country families would spend their Saturday nights at Bozo the Clown's Bingo Palace if the Nazis had won the war. McAlester, Oklahoma, is the Fifth Reich. Packets of bingo cards and a pack of daubers of fluorescent ink– payment for helping Henry Pussy Cat scout out a place to bury his newborn's placenta and plant a maple sapling over it.

May 30th-

It was outside of Vega when the Tonkawas finally ambushed, killed, and took off with Prufrock's torso. We were traveling west, men of true grit still reporting on the Western Expansion and just a few miles from the vortex of the American Dream. Apaches scouts even realized this, despite their racial handicap. Tonkawas are all alike, having no respect for the decency of the white man's culture. We trustworthy Comanche guides will be blamed for this incident. Some backwoods law enforcement agency will hunt us down like rabid dogs. Tonight, while my colleagues and I are being held in some dank stockade and sodomized by semiautomatic rifles and esoteric branding irons, the sky over Flattop Mountain will be ablaze by banquet fire and laughter of those cannibal savages with a grease ring of Prufrock smeared on their sated faces.

July 25th-

A sunset skirmish at Palo Duro Canyon, the turning point of the battle was when we replaced the shredded alternator belt in Chaat's Buick with his girlfriend's pantyhose. Eka-paa, the magician, led his daughter's favorite horses off the cliffs, turning each one into a star so not to be stolen. The tobacco smell from nigger-lipped cigarettes of the dead gives me a headache. Some time in the night, the commanding officer was shot in the throat with a humming bird.

Transcribed is the poem recited from memory by Eka-paa while in battle:

Palo Duro Canyon where wounded have fallen

hitting the ground like sunset, where the desperate tried

throwing ropes around the moon calling it a raid,

the glorious reign of the Chinaberry Moon

surrendering at a picnic table. Now...there

is a twenty four hour convenient Quick Stop

at the bottom. Madame _ _ _ is cashier.

In the parking lot, shopping carts and stars collide.

July 27rd-

Approximately one hundred fifty miles southwest of Fort Sill. Midnight, the hour of raids. Lassoes lay upon the ground, the men sitting within. Their tobacco smoke spirals up to the Moon. With her hands upon their shoulders, they pray to take many tanks, trucks, and horses. Commanding Officer Stanford's body was interred into a crevasse at the base of Cap Rock. I've cut my hair short on the right side and dyed my scalp lock red; heading south into Mexico with Velroy. Some Quohada and Yappithuka Comanches are there on a raid/vacation.

Comanche Contortionists

Tonight is the 130th anniversary

of the Sacred Contortionist Society.

Members rolled up into one big human ball

and bounced away.

They scare me, making me

think I'm having a good time

getting air-borne,

rolling under electrical fences,

scaring cattle,

racing trains,

disarming swat teams,

and showing me

how not to burn myself smoking

while curled up into a ball.

Inside their thick braids

they hide old Mexican treasure maps.

These Comanche witch-contortionists

ambush tanker-trucks

filled with inedible lard

and contort their spines

while they’re hunched over

chewing on the corners of Spanish rooftops.

Nothing is inedible to them.

The Frank Letters

Dearest Frank,

In response to your last correspondence,

everybody knows the letters of our alphabet can be classified

as individuals, species, etc.

Every letter is affected by accidents arising from matter or form.

Poetry is the art of using the most appealing lies

to attain truth.

Frank-

...marriage is for fucking

Christians. It is the God's truth.

Before, during, and after sex you better have within you,

quite clearly, the image of what you desire.

It neutralizes the evil,

it's the old civil code of the Sacred Prostitute.

F-

I am held up in Durango low on ammo and feeling ill.

My body is shutting down. According to Galen,

the human body is made up of four humours:

blood; bile; black bile; and phlegm.

This must explain my cycles of fevers and nightmares.

I wish I was back surveying

and popping off prairie chicken heads

with your lever-action .22 .

Frank the pink Axe,

Things are better, remember when I departed

you held my hand and said, "I want the man bearing the cross

to be its only victim..."

Black Star

At midnight, in a plastic Wal-mart bag,

Jesus is a fat peyote button.

Inside old man Black Star's teepee,

a quarter-moon altar

of dirt with a silver dollar

centered on a doily of cedar.

Skin of the kettle drum

dipped in creek water.

Sovo, the actor, sings a peyote song

into a fan of macaw feathers.

On a mattress of sage,

I drink tea from a glass canister.

Gritty and full of pulp,

backwash of Eternity dribbles off my chin.

I resonate with midnight,

the hour of raids

sweeping across the countryside

like a clock's second hand

as stars remain still.

I vomit and it's good.

Sonara