Pieces of People

it has been a dozen years

since I read of the massacres

men and malice emboldened by metal

the numbing numbers of conquest

who was she

what was her name

like most land at the time

she was just taken

fiercely indignant

shouting, breaking things

casting them into the street

we know of her in words passed down

snippets of old paper

fire, stubbornness, defiance

a sine wave through strata

but we carry on

as has been the way

wearing her fingerprint

through clean-cut suburbs

pine fences and greasy plates

like a two cent merit badge

pinned to insecurity

romanticizing parts we want

from times and people

we now are not

not beset by the latent shame

knowing only some of what was

done to her

to all of them

where her family died

where they are buried

the totem animals are silenced

by the numbers of bodies exhumed

(little children, you've been hiding all this time)

as my father of aging jet black hair scoffs

at another "blonde Pocahontas"

as great grandmother scolds quietly

from the shelf above the hearth

reminding whatever wisp of her is left

she's still angry