Category: Poems

MARK FOGARTY

NOW YOU KNOW ONE OF THE MISSING

During the time that Misty was gone, she was one of more than a thousand indigenous women missing in North America.
—The Guardian

Misty Upham’s drama coach
Told her to find another line of work.
Despite that, she became a professional actor.
You’ve seen her in August: Osage County
And many others. I saw her in a movie called
Frozen River, where she gets involved in a scam
To smuggle people in from Canada
Through a tribe’s right to move unimpeded across the international border.
That’s real, guaranteed by the Jay Treaty of 1794.
The white woman was the star, but you’d remember
Misty in it, her persistence, her push
To cross borders. She would catch your eye.

Misty Upham was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award
For her work in Frozen River, and for a joint cast award
From the Screen Actors Guild for August: Osage County.

Now you know one of the thousands who have gone missing.
Now that you think about it, you remember her, too.
Oh yeah, the quiet one. The one who played the Indian girl.

Misty achieved what she did
Despite perpetual agony and anxiety.
Misty was gang raped as a teen. And she was raped
At the Golden Globes the year before she died.
She used alcohol and a whole formulary of drugs
To push on; she tried to kill herself several times.

When Misty went missing on the Muckleshoot Reservation,
Local police declined to search for her. She was just out partying
With other drunk Natives; she’d turn up.

Nothing fucking happened until eight days later
When CNN asked why no one was looking
For this notable young actress.

Her family, not the police, organized a search party for Misty.
After she was missing 11 days,
They found her dead, at the bottom of a ravine near the White River.
Her blood was full of alcohol, but the coroner ruled
He could not come to a conclusion as to why she died.

The treaties don’t protect you from shit.
You lived near a border of relentless indifference,
Near something inside that’s gone grossly missing.

And when they found you,
Your family touched you through the body bag,
Your arms, your legs, so you’d know
They came looking for you.

For Misty Upham, 1982-2014, and advocates for MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women). A detailed article from The Guardian about her is at https://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/jun/30/misty-upham-native-american-actress-tragic-death-inspiring-life

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Susanna Lee

Dear Anton, I Borrowed Your Last Line
But, Here, I Brought It Back
Oh, No! Now It’s Wrinkled, Sorry

Every morning I go outside to fetch the newspaper from the box.
Birds are already lined up on the telephone wire between the poles,
waiting for Anton’s last line to lead them in song.

Paterson Falls is dammed; it splutters and jams;
its water piles up, an ocean ladder reaching to the moon.
The river refuses to fall, waiting for Anton’s last line to drop first.

Five-year-olds at the neighbor’s birthday party swing bats,
but their swats cannot break the piñata.
It refuses to share its sweets before Anton’s last line shows up.

The sun cannot cast a shadow
without Anton’s last line to offer its silhouette.

Everyone is drowning in tears.
Anton’s last line is missing.

Lawnmowers go to sleep, unneeded,
as grass rends itself, distraught without Anton’s last line.

The earth opens up and swallows its own dust
in fear that Anton’s last line has come to a bad end.

Arctic glaciers bob fiercely on the roiling sea,
pleading for the safe return of Anton’s last line.

The heroic printer revs up—
it shoots out one black duplicate of Anton’s last line!

Please, Anton, here, take it back,
reunite this copy of your last line with the body of your poem.

Hold tight to your poems, Red Wheelbarrow Poets, hold tight.

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Frank Rubino

Bowhunters

A family of deer appeared on the neighbor’s property. 
My nephews strung their bows. 
One had a crossbow; the other’s looked like a strut off a bridge, 
elaborate, articulated, modern with pulleys. 
They lined up all their arrows with different heads 
and colored fletching, yellow-green and orange,
on the hood of their truck,
and set their bow stands steady on the grass, 
and marshaled abilities learned in the army 
to make the best tactical formation.

They waited on the four deer, two does grown
and two younger, and talked quietly, 
earnestly about the deer, drinking, 
deciding which would be the best one to take. 
They consulted— again— their Google research page
on the proper place to put an arrow in a deer: 
behind the shoulder where the liver, the heart, 
and the lungs all clustered, and pulsed its blood.
If a deer should jump the fence, it would be in the legal target zone 
my nephews had established on my brother’s property.

The boys’ wives came out from my brother’s house 
and talked with them sotto voce, with their eyes
avidly on the deer, and smiled at the prospect of an easy kill. 
The deer ignored them and walked around cropping grass 
on their side, drifting closer, twenty, fifteen, ten yards away.
The wives went back in the house to let it happen. 

My brother came out then and walked gravely
to the truck, and stood among the arrayed arrows.
“Your mother says you can’t kill a deer here today. 
She says, ‘There are kids and people coming over, 
and you can’t shoot and clean an animal.’”
My nephews protested to my brother, their father,
who had taught them to shoot, after all,
when they were children, 
and he looked down on the grass and said, “Look,
I’m telling you, if you shoot a deer you’ll have Hell to pay. 
You’ll upset your mother. You want to make your mother angry, 
go shoot the deer.” They both looked chastened. 
“I sure don’t want to make Mom mad,” said the younger. 
So they stood down, and left off stalking the deer— 
who moved anyway to the far side
of the neighbor’s clearing, and into the woods, and were lost—
and shot their arrows at a foam target cube instead. 
When he released it, and his arrow thwacked, the elder brother said, 
“To the fletch, it sinks.”

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