Sherman Alexie

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

What can you say about a movie so horrific even its title scares people away?
-Stephen King

I
have seen it
and I like it: The blood,
the way like Sand Creek
even its name brings fear,
because I am an American
Indian and have learned
words are another kind of violence.

This vocabulary is genetic.
When Leatherface crushes the white boy’s skull
with a sledgehammer, brings it down again and again
while the boy’s arms and legs spasm and kick wildly
against real and imagined enemies, I remember

another killing floor

in the slaughter yard from earlier in the film,
all the cows with their stunned eyes and mouths
waiting for the sledgehammer with fear so strong
it becomes a smell that won’t escape. I remember

the killing grounds

of Sand Creek
where 105 Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children
and 28 men were slaughtered by 700 heavily armed soldiers,
led by Colonel Chivington and his Volunteers. Volunteers.

Violence has no metaphors; it does have reveille.

Believe me, there is nothing surprising
about a dead body. This late in the twentieth century
tears come easily and without sense:
taste and touch have been replaced
by the fear of reprisal. I have seen it

and like it: The butchery, its dark humor
that thin line “between art and exploitation,”
because I recognize the need to prove blood
against blood. I have been in places
where I understood Tear his heart out
and eat it whole. I have tasted rage
and bitterness like skin between my teeth.

I have been in love.

I first saw it in the reservation drive-in
and witnessed the collected history
of America roll and roll across the scree,
voices and dreams distorted by tin speakers.
Since then, I have been hungry
For all those things I haven’t seen.

This country demands that particular sort of weakness:
we must devour everything on our plates
and ask for more. Our mouths hinge open.
Our teeth grow long and we gnaw them down
to prevent their growth into the brain. I have

seen it and like it: The blood,
the way like music
it makes us all larger
and more responsible
for our sins,
because I am an American
Indian and have learned

hunger becomes madness easily.

but I’m taking it to class tomorrow… I wanted to show a favorite poem to my students… I wanted to show them a poem that is easy to read, tells a story, and makes me happy all around and decided on this one.

The Rural Carrier Discovers
That Love Is Everywhere

-by T.R. Hummer

A registered letter for the Jensens. I walk down their drive
Through the gate of their thick-hedged yard, and by God there they are,
On a blanket in the grass, asleep, buck-naked, honeymooners
Not married a month. I smile, turn to leave,
But can’t help looking back. Lord, they’re a pretty sight,
Both of them, tangled up in each other, easy in their skin-
It’s their own front yard, after all, perfectly closed in
By privet hedge and country. Maybe they were here all night.

I want to believe they’d do that, not thinking of me
Or anyone but themselves, alone in the world
Of the yard with its clipped grass and fresh-picked fruit trees.
Whatever this letter says can wait. To hell with the mail.
I slip through the gate, silent as I came, and leave them
Alone. There’s no one they need to hear from.

I wanted to post a poem today. I looked and looked and looked and couldn’t find one. I went to the bookshelf, and I pulled out books and books. I flipped and read and sought out dog-ears. I couldn’t find one. Some days there’s just not a poem to fit what you’re feeling. Or maybe the poem I need is one I haven’t read yet.

I don’t know why I never thought to get her to autograph my copy of Junk City.

The Coat
by Barbara Anderson

The first time I noticed the blue
on the white snow was the day
my mother found a twenty dollar bill
on the way to the subway
and cautioned me to walk always
with my head to the ground
if I ever expected to find anything
in this world for free.
It was the first day my bather wore
the enormous brown overcoat,
all he had left of his dead brother,
the coat I was afraid of
because I believed my father
walked everywhere like a ventriloquist
wisecracking to his fat unfunny brother
like they always had
on Sundays around the kitchen table
while my mother basted the chicken
or peeled the potatoes.
It was New Year’s day, 1961,
the upside down year I turned over
& over again on the cover of Mad Magazine
while my father got drunk
on the subway and joked & cried
for his brother who he would
never seen again, not for Auld Lang Syne,
not for all the coming emptiness
of 1961 which turns over & over
like my uncle’s inscrutable riddle
about the weight of gold or feathers
that I had to answer
before he’d give me a silver dollar
or a chocolate kiss.
On the first day of 1961
my father cried on the subway
as my mother took the whole family
to see Natalie Wood & Warren Beatty
fall in love in a small town in Kansas
in a time my mother said she could remember,
the brief good years before the Depression.
She was my age then, thirteen.
On January 1, 1961, it was so cold
on the balcony of the Loews Valencia
my mother allowed my father
to give me a sip of the brown liquor
and then another & another
as Natalie Wood ran hysterical,
from a classroom, after losing her first love
and reading a passage
from Intimations of Immortality,
words about loss and strength
I memorized as the theatre went dark again
and we all rode home a little drunk
& silent in the artificial midnight
lighting of the IRT where I wrote my first poem
and my mother counted her change like feathers or gold
and my father fell asleep on her shoulder
snoring with his ghostly brown coat wrapped around them.

I’ve decided to try to memorize Leda and the Swan. Will have to recite it on either the 23rd or 30th. Will keep you posted.

Leda and the Swan
by William Butler Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
                                               Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

After the Dragon
by Trevor Howard

Fish had more tattoos
than anybody I ever knew,
and what made it really
interesting was that he
didn’t mind talking about
them at all. He liked people
who liked his tattoos. He
kept saying that we were
going to have to go up to
the D to get me one, but he
warned me that once you get
the first you have to be
planning the next one so
that you wouldn’t leave them
unbalanced. I said that I
couldn’t decide what to get.
I said that a maple leaf
might not be all that bad.
Fish called me a wimp and
said that if I was going to
get something as stupid as
that he wasn’t going to go
up there with me. So I was
off the hook for a little
while until he asked me
again and I muttered something
about an eagle. “Jesus,” he
said, “first it’s a goddamn
maple leaf. Now it’s an
eagle.” He was particular
about tattoos. “What about
a snake,” he said,” snakes
are always good… Or a
dragon…” Fish was really
proud of his dragon tattoo.
It was a genuine Lyle Tuttle
tattoo. He had gotten it in
San Francisco after proving
his sincerity to Mr. Tuttle
by showing him his collection
and telling him that he’d come
all the way from Chicago for
the chance to be tattooed by
Lyle Tuttle. Fish told me that
Lyle Tuttle was the biggest name
there was in the tattoo world.
Peter Fonda had a Lyle Tuttle
tattoo. After the dragon, so
did Fish.

I wrote an annotation on this poem for class. I sort of like it…
I think its weirdness is growing on me

A Debt Is Paid
by A. Van Jordan

We younger kids were playing
when Johny took the stray
dog in his hands,
took a stick,
stuck it in the dog’s butt,
broke it off there.

We were just playing
and too afraid to stop
this staged nightmare;
too afraid he’d do
the same to one of us.

Years later, they say,
Johnny owed people.
The news did not surprise me:

he was found naked
hanging like a raw light bulb
from the ceiling of his garage,
body bloated,
hands bound,
a bouquet of credit cards
and dollar bills planted
in his ass. He swung
like that for days till
someone went to see what
the dogs were barking at.

I have a hard time memorizing poems. I’ve struggled with it for as long as I can remember. But I’ve been working REALLY hard for the past month, and I hope to recite the following poem in class on Monday. It might be my favorite poem. Will let you know how it goes

First Poem for You
by Kim Addonizio

I like to touch your tattoos in complete
darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of
where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lightning pulsing just above
your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
to me, taking you until we’re spent
and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss
the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until
you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists
or turns to pain between us, they will still
be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.

And condolences to Karla for her loss. Came upon this poem while searching for another one for her, and this has always been one of my favorites—reminds me of our Bogie.

“The History Of One Tough Motherfucker” by Charles Bukowski

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,”not much
chance…give him these pills…his backbone
is crushed, but is was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he’ll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he’s been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there…also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off…”

I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn’t eat, he
wouldn’t touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn’t go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn’t work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I’d had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough

one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.

“you can make it,” I said to him.

he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn’t want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.

you know the rest: now he’s better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left…

and now sometimes I’m interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,”look, look
at this!”

but they don’t understand, they say something like,”you
say you’ve been influenced by Celine?”

“no,” I hold the cat up,”by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!”

I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he’s relaxed he knows…

it’s then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.

he too knows it’s bullshit but that somehow it all helps.