Sherman Alexie

Go, Ghost, Go

At this university upon a hill
I meet a tenured professor
who’s strangely thrilled
to list all of the oppressors –
Past, present and future – who have killed,
Are killing, and will kill the indigenous.
O, he names the standard suspects –
Rich, white and unjust –
And I, a red man, think he is correct,
But why does he have to be so humorless?

And how can he, a white man, fondly speak
Of the Ghost Dance, the strange and true
ceremony
That, if performed well, would have doomed
All white men to hell, destroyed their colonies
And brought every dead Indian back to life?
The Professor says “Brown people
From all brown tribes
Will burn skyscrapers and steeples
They’ll speak Spanish and carry guns and knives.

Sherman, can’t you see that immigration
is the new and improved Ghost Dance?
All I can do is laugh and laugh
And say “Damn, you’ve got some imagination,
You should write a screenplay about this shit –
About some fictional city,
Grown fat and pale and pretty,
That’s destroyed by a Chicano apocalypse.

The Professor doesn’t speak.  He shakes his head
And assaults me with his pity.
I wonder how he can believe
In a ceremony that requires his death.
I think that he thinks he’s the new Jesus.
He’s eager to get on that cross
And pay the ultimate cost
Because he’s addicted to the indigenous.