Stereotype This

Today I couldn’t handle the pain of being an American Indian

There’s a clawing deep inside,

Like a spider in a thirsty drought

And it screams in broken lullaby:

I don’t want to be a drunk Indian

I don’t want to be the drunk Indian

Today a boarding school sat like a lump in my throat

And the ghosts of dead Indian children

With butchered hair and broken Christian wings,

Shattered bottles down on my feet and screamed:

We don’t want to be drunk Indians

We don’t want to be the drunk Indians

Today I walked away from my lover

How do I tell him that I feel the Trail of Tears like hard sand in my veins?

That I feel Wounded Knee like a frozen battlefield in my stomach?

That I feel the Long Walk like snapping branches in my legs?

I feel it all every time I sip from another bottle of burned memories –

The residue of genocide

And it hums in broken lullaby:

You are a drunk Indian

You are the drunk Indian

And I feel coyote pull in my finger tips

Porcupine in my skin

Crow in my hair

My feet like broken stairs

Because history moves like a fevered heat down through the arteries of generations

Because PTSD to the family tree is like an ax

Because colonization is the ghosts of buffalos with broken backs

Because today only burning flags could be found at the ghost dance of my people

And they all chant in unison:

We are not a stereotype

We are not

Your stereotype