When I learned I might have cancer,
I bought fifteen white lilies. Easter was gone:
the trumpets were wilted, plants crooked with roots
bound in pots. I dug them into the garden,
knowing they would not bloom for another year.
All summer, the stalks stood like ramshackle posts
while I waited for results. By autumn, the stalks
had flopped down. More biopsies, laser incisions,
the cancer in my tongue a sprawling mass. Outside,
the earth remained bare, rhizomes shrunken
below the frost line. Spring shoots appeared
in bright green skins, and lilies bloomed
in July, their waxed trumpets pure white,
dusting gold pollen to the ground.
This year,
tripled in number, they are popping up again. I wait,
a ceremony, for the lilies to open, for the serpentine length
of the garden to bloom in the shape of my tongue’s scar,
a white path with one end leading into brilliant air,
the other down the throat’s canyon, black
and unforgiving. I try to imagine
what could grow in such darkness. I am waiting
for the lilies to open.
--Dr. Karenne Wood (1960-2019), member of the Monacan Indian Nation, poet and anthropologist, from Markings on Earth, 2001
I.
The first question is always phrased this way:
“So. How much Indian are you?”
II.
We did not live in tepees.
We did not braid our hair.
We did not fringe our shirts.
We did not wear war bonnets.
We did not chase the buffalo.
We did not carry shields.
We were never Plains Indians.
We tried to ride,
but we kept falling off of our dogs.
III.
A local official came to our office to ask our help with a city event. He had a splendid
idea, he said. To kick off the event and show everyone in town that our tribe was still
around, we should go up to the bluff overlooking the city and make a big smoke
signal. Then they would know we were here.
Who ever heard of smoke signals in the forests? I imagined us upon the bluff, lighting
one of those firestarter bricks. We haven’t made fire since the Boy Scouts took over.
And how would the citizens know it was us? They’d probably call the fire department.
IV.
As they ask, they think, yes,
I can see it in her face. High cheekbones
(whatever those are) and dark hair.
Here’s a thought: don’t we all have
high cheekbones? If we didn’t,
our faces would cave in.
(But I do have a colonized nose.)
I’m sick of explaining myself.
“You know,” I finally say,
“It doesn’t matter to my people.”
I ride off to my ranch-style home.
Time to weave a basket, or something.
--Dr. Karenne Wood (1960-2019), member of the Monacan Indian Nation, poet and anthropologist, from Markings on Earth, 2001
