Drag the Red

In a seventh grade classroom
a little white girl allows her
wandering mind to slip
onto the desk--
a fat wet sound
her fingers squeeze it absently
her eyes on the windowpane, soft
as fallen snow.

Public-school girl will not
(is not supposed to)
listen or remember teacher talk
“The bloody falls massacre…”
A river clinks with coppermine
Indians called Inuits
stealthy, slit, shot,
the pleasure of killing
a savage
the water runs red with copper
salty blood.

It is a history taught once
to twelve-year-olds turned
Canadians who call us
“Indigenous People”
Imagine us Pocahontasing
far away in time or
across more northern roads in
tee-pees
igloos
red places
I am a First Nations woman.

I only live
in history class.

Meanwhile, volunteers drag that
churning river for my bloated body.
I am blue lipped
skin, bubbles
trailing behind an orange raft
my hair waves tendrils of black ink in a
mirthful mud play
I lick the Winnipeg riverbed and
spout water when
Drag the Red Searchers Get
Grim Lesson on Finding, Identifying Bones.

They drop hooks and chains into
water into history into news--
recorded as an overdose
all my fingernails were pulled out of
my body
was black and blue.

The cities are not safe for me either
in Canada in 2015, a quarter of
all women murdered
were Indigenous.

I play with the goldeye
it whiskers my cheeks fish kissing
nibbles my watery flesh from bone
leave me to my calcium
and collagen frame
scatter me so
I remain
mysterious.

So that I only die
in history class.

Artwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat