Joker Joker King
four poems
Joker Joker King The only time that I played a slot machine, I was with my father at the tribal casino. I bought forty bucks of tokens for each of us. In earlier years, I wouldn't have supported his gambling addiction but we knew that he was terminally ill, so it didn't matter. I won more often than he did and gave my small jackpots to him so that he could play for a little longer. But, had I known that he'd die two weeks later— months earlier than expected— I would've paid for us to gamble for hours and hours more.
Speech Have you ever been punched in the face by a racist? I have. So I know the difference between ugly insults and uglier knuckles. I know the difference between redneck words and fists as stony as fossilized birds. I know the taste of blood between my rez boy teeth and I know that nouns and verbs have never made me bleed.
My Criminal Career We bought this car for $500 and the car before that for $750 and the car before that for $600 and all of our junky cars during my whole life have broken down somewhere and now, this new old car is troubled. Can you hear the whir whir whir of an ignition that will not turn over? Our family is parked twenty-seven miles from home but this is the two- lane road to the rez so some random tribal member will soon drive by and ferry us to our HUD house where five busted cars are forever parked. When we kids were small, we'd pretend those cars worked. We'd take turns behind the wheel and it was always the driver who got to choose the next imaginary destination. I always drove us to San Diego because of the ocean and because Mexico was only minutes away and I liked to pretend that we Indian kids robbed banks—some of us bold and some of us timid— and we could cross the border carrying all the twenty dollar bills that had ever been minted.
World Exposition, Spokane, Washington, 1974 In the swing seat gondola traveling over the Spokane River, my left sneaker came loose and I used my right foot to keep it from falling into the water below. We were poor. It was my only pair of shoes. But I took some comfort in knowing that, if my shoe did fall into the river, then it would flow with the current that has been feeding my tribe's body and soul for millennia.
Joker Joker King hit me right in the heart. My mom told me the only place she could forget her "problems" (kidney failure, diabetes, cardiac issues and painful arthritis) was at the casino. I was sitting next to her at a slot machine in Laughlin, NV when she had a heart attack. Because of frequent occurrences with a senior customer base, she got immediate care and survived another 15 years. We continued at the casinos until she was 92. I haven't been in one since, but think I should go as a way of remembrance, similar to how I light candles for her at San Xavier mission near my Tucson home.
“I know that nouns
and verbs have never
made me bleed”
They make your soul bleed.