Hunger Psalm

five very short poems

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Ode to Flight

In the morning sky, 
two hundred birds

turn as one
with gorgeous 

symmetry.
O, my love,

let's fold
together

and become one
thrumming wing.

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Lifetime Membership 

My father's riding lawnmower—
unused since his death

twenty years ago—still sits
in the front yard 

of our reservation home.
It's on permanent exhibit 

in the Museum of Never
Letting Go.

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Humanism

People are
my steeple.

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High School

If you haven't sprinted
with your best friends
through a midnight field
and been clotheslined

by a barbed wire fence
then you don't know me
like the white farm town
boys who gently lifted me

from the dirt and marveled
at the constellation 
of little wounds sparkling
red across my shirt.

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Hunger Psalm

After the Indian money
was gone and we'd eaten
the last of the food,
our mother and father

drove to Spokane
and pawned their wedding
rings for the cash to pay
for the eggs, hamburger,

milk, and electric bill.
Then we Indian siblings
ate our fill. Thank God
for our parents' wedding

bands. O, praise, O, praise
his and her left hand.