Article voiceover
Driving on empty, telling myself the joke that nobody can make a car go farther on an ounce of gas than rez Indians, I dreamed of winning the lottery. But not the big money. Not the millions. It's dangerous to dream too big. I just wanted to win a few thousand— enough to take my parents and siblings on a crazy-spending weekend in the city. Get a hotel room. Eat fancy food. Buy new clothes. And 56 novels for me to read. Then my car remembered it was winter and slid on ice toward the twenty-foot drop on the left before running into the shallow ditch on the right. The car was okay. I was okay. It was a minor crash. My car sat in a reservation ditch so I knew that some random truck- driving Indian would eventually wander by and pull me back onto the road. And, hey, maybe you think that I learned a safety lesson about distracted driving— about distracted living. But I didn't pause. You know what I did after my cousin showed up and got me back onto the road? I remembered that I had no gas so I started crooning a powwow tune while using the steering wheel as a drum and my voice as my voice and drove my emptinesses all the way home where I shared a sleeve of saltine crackers and butter with my sisters, brothers, and the five stray dogs who, at separate times over the years, had all strode into our unfinished home and declared us their humans. We were their lottery win. So, yeah, here's a little thing for you to know: When you're poor, your dogs and you eat the same food. And if you sing the higher notes long enough then your dogs will howl, too.
This is so beautiful. Slayed by "drove my emptiness all the way home where I shared a sleeve of saltine crackers and butter with my sisters." Thank you! I'll practice holding the high notes now.
Poem that’s a painting. Jackson Pollock and a Dreamscape of Magritte. But fully three dimensional.