Battlefield

Battlefield

By Mark Turcotte
Mark Turcotte (1958—) was raised on North Dakota's Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation. After attending school in Lansing, Michigan, he lived on . . . MORE »

Back when I used to be Indian
I am standing outside the
pool hall with my sister.
She strawberry blonde. Stale sweat
and beer through the
open door. A warrior leans on his stick,
fingers blue with chalk.
Another bends to shoot.
His braids brush the green
felt, swinging to the beat
of the jukebox. We move away.
Hank Williams falls again
in the backseat of a Cadillac.
I look back.
A wind off the distant hills lifts my shirt,
brings the scent
of wounded horses.

Chord

Chord

By Stuart Dybek
Stuart Dybek (1942—) is a masterful short story writer as well as poet. The qualities that distinguish his fiction—a strong connection to place,


A man steps out of sunlight,
sunlight that streams like grace,
still gaping at blue sky
staked across the emptiness of space,
into a history where shadows
assume a human face.

A man slips into silence
that began as a cry,
still trailing music
although reduced to the sigh
of an accordion
as it folds into its case.

A Black Man Talks of Reaping

A Black Man Talks of Reaping

By Arna Bontemps

Arna Bontemps (1902—1973)

Like his close friend Langston Hughes and their fellow writers in the Harlem Renaissance, Arna Bontemps

I have sown beside all waters in my day.
I planted deep, within my heart the fear
that wind or fowl would take the grain away.
I planted safe against this stark, lean year.

I scattered seed enough to plant the land
in rows from Canada to Mexico
but for my reaping only what the hand
can hold at once is all that I can show.

Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields
my brother's sons are gathering stalk and root;
small wonder then my children glean in fields
they have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.