Poetry
Sherman Alexie
Late summer night on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Ten Indi-
ans are playing basketball on a court barely illuminated by the
streetlight above them. They will play until the brown, leather ball
is invisible in the dark. They will play until an errant pass jams a
finger, knocks a pair of glasses off the face, smashes a nose and
draws blood. They will play until the ball bounces off the court
and disappears into the shadows.
This may be all you need to know about Native American literature.
from One Stick Song, Hanging Loose Press, 2000:
Migration, 1902
The salmon swim
So thick in this river
that Grandmother walks
across the water
on the bridge
of their spines.
from Crow Testament
1.
Cain lifts Crow, that heavy black bird
and strikes down Abel.
Damn, says Crow, I guess
this is just the beginning.
2.
The white man, disguised
as a falcon, swoops in
and yet again steals a salmon
from Crow’s talons.
Contributor
Sherman AlexieSHERMAN ALEXIE is an author. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award for his 2009 novel, War Dances.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Nari Ward and Robin Rhode: Power Wall
By Barbara A. MacAdamJUNE 2020 | ArtSeen
Extrapolating from American poet Robert Frost’s iconic reflection “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” we see in Power Wall both the brute reality of the wall and its much-loved qualities. Something in the work of both Robin Rhode and Nari Ward invites us to see the wall as so many things: barrier, writing surface, canvas, community center, basketball court, dance floor, and even decorative backdrop.
The Most Dangerous Branch?
By Harry FederMARCH 2022 | Books
In his pre-retirement plaintive wail for institutional relevance, The Authority of the Court and the Perils of Politics, Justice Stephen Breyer laments that education is failing in its task to engender in the general populace an understanding, love, and respect for the rule of law and the pronouncements of the law’s final arbiters, the Supreme Court.
The End of Roe
By Rob HunterMAY 2022 | Field Notes
The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade should and will prompt no little reflection on the state of many struggles today. How and why did the mainstream abortion advocacy movement become so focused on national-level fundraising and litigation, at the expense of engaging with (let alone learning from or being led by) local activists?
86. The South Bronx
By Raphael RubinsteinFEB 2022 | The Miraculous
The mayor of New York City borrows a life-size fiberglass sculpture of a shirtless young man with a boombox and a basketball (he holds the ball under his left arm, while his right foot rests on the boombox) to place on the front lawn of his official residence on the occasion of presenting a filmmaker renowned for his depictions of everyday urban life with the keys to the city.
