Sy Hoahwah

This is the deepest part of the world. Bird don’t fly here, but there is the sound of wings. The smell, just a struggle in the earth underneath the musty floorboards. Monsters hatch fully-grown from their eggs. Snaky legs indicate chaos. I carry sad omens, slobber down the psychic’s legs to her feet pointed backwards. I roll off the back of a skull strapped on top of a fox who shape-shifts into the irresistible. A Christian, Oklahoma-shaped and melancholic, caught at the entrance of a ditch as the best breath of me tornadoes into the next county.

My ancestors were not diligent and so they lived beside the fort that's neither on the maps of Heaven, Nor of Hell. In these lands, there is no difference between a star and thrown car keys. Chicken nuggets hatch from the eggs of eagles. I grow dirty while bathing in bottled water. My bed comforter is a wet parking lot, I wrap myself up in. If I eat in the morning, there's nothing left in the evening My dish of grass and cigarette butts topped with expired coupons. Stir all I like; I never swallow it down. All the while, my rabbit's foot runs about from Las Cruces to West Memphis searching for flawless luck. The more one cries, the more one prospers . . . O' ancestral demon, may my lamentation become verbal sorcery.

. . . makes a noisy entry into Texas like tumbling file cabinets. Four mountains Four creeks Four forts Four suns Four seasons Four nations—Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho * At Yellow House Canyon the river turns tight. Talons skim the water, waves confirm dawn. With white sheets tied around their waists Tonkawa scouts cannibalistically count out a bag of children’s hands. Seated in a silver Concho saddle, Death’s dirty sergeant lights up his ceremonial breathing leaf. * Where Cache Creek empties into the Red River is a nerve center of war. There Velroy fought the gruesome brotherhood: Blue Corpse, Smallpox, and the Creeper, cruel 300 lb nymphs. They tried to strip his body of Carbon-14 atoms. Velroy, knowledgeable in the Flying Crane Technique of Kung-Fu, drop-kicked Blue Corpse in the windpipe simultaneously breaking his neck in three places. He tricked The Creeper with his own taboo. By passing wolf’s milk and tequila through a hole in an oak tree, it made The Creeper vomit up his own stomach. Velroy quickly buried it, turning him into a tree. Smallpox challenged Velroy to a dance-off. It took place on top of the creek. While Smallpox was doing a head spin, Velroy pulled the cardboard out from under him. Smallpox dropped into the water and drowned. * Snake Woman sits in the deep, a cinema of silver scales. Her hair moves like meadow grass in flood water. * Members of the Black Knife Society crossed the south fork of the river on horseback in a V-formation. They possess gear simultaneously musical and military: a stretched skin to serve as both shield and drum, and a club, sword, or lance that is also a drumstick. * At the Red River Ute chief cuts my guitar strings Ute women love Punk

Velroy de-jays the séance-turntables, spinning black water, scratching out full moons with red and blue curves of hip hop. In the dance club, bodies are a collection of sunrise songs in reverse. Corey wears her cat-eye contacts and no panties. There’s the bathroom-stall eagle medicine with Ecstasy placed on the tongue. She handles the lace like a Kiowa church hymn. Dee is Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Fort Sill Apache. He couldn’t enroll into any tribe but he can grass dance, bump and grind, and do the Jerry Lewis. Black girls love him. Stoney has four wives, Indian way. He has ghost medicine and carries a small white ball of clay. He sells peyote and coke to the white boys. I have a southern accent. I killed a Lakota man, he was a Rollin ’20. It was with a shotgun. It was powwow season, I fancy danced.

The Ozarks are where defeated assassins, the unholy, and monsters come to retire. The proper soil and crooked moonlight grow back the disemboweled, the decapitated, while we collect arrears in child support for our demi-god children. The procession of taillights lined deep down the logging trails. Along the way, there was a gentleman arguing with his soul over his suicide. I, tongue of snakes. Cut up, dipped in powdered sugar, scattered to the ants in the deepest corner of Mt. Nebo as an insult, bind my ghost to the mountain. Typhoon collected the few precious scales left of me from the undertow. My southern accent-muscle burned up from haunting your life/house. Now, let daybreak be my head and the year, my whole body. An online southern Christian university ordained my smoker’s cough to be a dove. My favorite exorcism: The demon, steeped in corn bread philosophy, does not have enough ass to carry off the jeans he advertises as he kneels down to the priest and holy water. Years ago, as a child, I climbed the levee and made a hole in the air. That’s where I will rest, but the gate is not wide enough. Like my burial site, I am party-size.

Spanish captive, Hoahwah, married twin sisters. The one wife called Double turned into a snake after eating a nest of glossy eggs. Snake Woman still lives on Mt. Scott, sleeps facing west. The sun a white skull itself bathes her on the cedar breaks. In rectangular dreams she calls the young men grandson. The other sister Tsi-yee, named after a war deed (her father charged a cavalry office knocked him off his horse then lanced him to the prairie) bore three children: Tabe titah, Namnetse, and Sam Hoahwah. Lena, Sam Hoahwah’s favorite daughter ran off with an Arapaho from Canton. Sam sent his men after her on horseback, their ranch-hand-shadows overcast the Cheyenne and Arapaho Rez. Lena said: I ain’t comin back. She bled to death on a mattress after a miscarriage. Mother couldn’t remember Lena just the car ride to Post Oak Cemetery and watching wind in the pinwheels. Mother died the same age, fish-tailing into Comanche history in a Chevy Z-28 without car insurance. Great grandfather Sam Hoahwah first Indian in southwest Oklahoma to own a car got run over with his own Model-T. His Mexican cowboy-chauffeur forgot to take it out of gear when Sam crank-started the car. Not far from his own car, Uncle Fredrick was found dead in the weeds of Cache Road, keys missing. He sang gospels in Comanche, and backup on Robby Robertson’s Contact from the Underworld of RedBoy. (Uncle liked Levon Helm better.) Frederick Jr. caught ghost sickness bicycling across Post Oak Cemetery at night. He looked past his shoulder it twisted his face. The moon mocks him now. After the incident, his girlfriend fell in love with his cousin Rusty nicknamed Rabbit who loves fried baloney and calls it Indian Steak. Rabbit’s younger brother paints abstract horse murals in empty swimming pools, and images of a 20 foot long red talking snake who calls him grandson in his dreams.

Noted to be the definitive bright morning of 10,000 calendars. The church bell melted. Rage of unrequited love became a terrible serpent. The morning star lowered like an enemy’s flag. A vampire’s mattress tumbled out at the outskirts of town. Ancient lanterns, suddenly thrown through the air, somewhere deep in the mountains. That night, in a snowy rural area, an elderly, powder-faced woman appeared on doorsteps in search of wine. Her origins, neatly wrapped in the cold dressing of a snowflake’s breath.

Red Mupits’ breath, in moonlight, outside a child’s bedroom window Hunter’s bones scattered on the prairie Fragrance of Comanche gangstas who entered The Zoo Club and assassinated the bosses of Underworld Seven, a Navajo crime syndicate Little Stoney Burgess’s footprints after catching ghost sickness by running through Post Oak Cemetery chased by snot-nosed bully, Blender Plenty Bear Blue Lips of the poisoned tribal chairman collapsed on the buffet table at the 1974 Comanche Nation Inaugural Dinner Silk handkerchief drawn over the stuffed owl used to converse with the dead In the woods, it’s the laughter of Deer Woman as she stomps her male victim to death Electric guitar distortion of the Messiah playing Jimi Hendrix’s Machine Gun as she strolls into the Indian bar Yellow Coyote’s eyes in the darkness of the backseat at midnight as you speed down Mt. Scott, on a dare, with the headlights off Crushed buffalo kidney stones used in graffiti to magically imprison the river-witch underneath the I-44 bridge Intricate beadwork on Lucifer’s cane left at the funnel cake stand at Comanche Fair Flashing ignition light to the engines of the great abyss