Hobble Creek Review
| Dana Guthrie Martin |
Home
We gathered on the lawn outside our school,
some of us dressed as settlers, some as Indians.
Our teachers corralled the settlers behind a line,
told us not to move until they shouted “Go!”
A few tried to creep across sooner, the way
my mother’s relatives had in the real land run.
The kids dressed as Indians waited on the other side,
littering the dry grass like pieces of fruit
dropped from a horn of plenty. These were
the last moments in which the land was theirs,
before we were off with a faux-bang, crossing
over, our high-pitched screams pushing through
the sky. Some of us set our stakes as fast
as we could. We didn’t want any trouble.
Others went after the Indians with guns made
from sticks. “Don’t fight,” the teachers screamed.
“This isn’t some game of cowboys and Indians.”
I played a settler each year because it meant
I could wear my father’s bolo tie, the one
made from tiger’s eye, and because
we didn’t have any feathers for making
a headdress. I only vaguely knew then
that I was part Native American. Part.
It would be years before I realized
that’s what my mother meant when she said
my father’s anger was “the Indian in him.”
His drinking, too. And it was only after
his death that I understood why, on our trips
down to southern Oklahoma, to Chickasaw Nation,
he always leaned in and said he was going home.
Days Without Rain
When I was a child, we went 100 days without rain —
precipitation, the local weatherman called it.
I knew it most intimately not as a word but rather
a feeling, first on my arms, then all over
as it formed a skin slicker than the one
into which I was born. To this day when it rains
I open my mouth to let the water in, and the water
enters that soft, protected tissue without question,
the way my attention flows out the window each morning —
no matter how much despair I felt the night before —
allowing in the shrubs whose names I haven’t bothered
to learn. Allowing in the neighbor’s white house,
its peeling paint, down to bare cedar in places. Allowing in
the eastern Washington sun, which pretends at this hour
to be gentle, but betrays us all as the day wears on,
giving rise to dehydration, heat strokes and doors
swung wide, making houses seem more public than private.
I’ve lived through no drought since 1980, but I’ve known
temperatures so high the numbers don’t make sense.
I’ve known days and weeks without rain. On those days,
dry as brush, I’ve felt my mouth close against the world,
refuse it entry. I’ve watched the skin on my hands
grow thin, lines like dry riverbeds etching the surface,
begging the water to return to this place, this home.
We gathered on the lawn outside our school,
some of us dressed as settlers, some as Indians.
Our teachers corralled the settlers behind a line,
told us not to move until they shouted “Go!”
A few tried to creep across sooner, the way
my mother’s relatives had in the real land run.
The kids dressed as Indians waited on the other side,
littering the dry grass like pieces of fruit
dropped from a horn of plenty. These were
the last moments in which the land was theirs,
before we were off with a faux-bang, crossing
over, our high-pitched screams pushing through
the sky. Some of us set our stakes as fast
as we could. We didn’t want any trouble.
Others went after the Indians with guns made
from sticks. “Don’t fight,” the teachers screamed.
“This isn’t some game of cowboys and Indians.”
I played a settler each year because it meant
I could wear my father’s bolo tie, the one
made from tiger’s eye, and because
we didn’t have any feathers for making
a headdress. I only vaguely knew then
that I was part Native American. Part.
It would be years before I realized
that’s what my mother meant when she said
my father’s anger was “the Indian in him.”
His drinking, too. And it was only after
his death that I understood why, on our trips
down to southern Oklahoma, to Chickasaw Nation,
he always leaned in and said he was going home.
Days Without Rain
When I was a child, we went 100 days without rain —
precipitation, the local weatherman called it.
I knew it most intimately not as a word but rather
a feeling, first on my arms, then all over
as it formed a skin slicker than the one
into which I was born. To this day when it rains
I open my mouth to let the water in, and the water
enters that soft, protected tissue without question,
the way my attention flows out the window each morning —
no matter how much despair I felt the night before —
allowing in the shrubs whose names I haven’t bothered
to learn. Allowing in the neighbor’s white house,
its peeling paint, down to bare cedar in places. Allowing in
the eastern Washington sun, which pretends at this hour
to be gentle, but betrays us all as the day wears on,
giving rise to dehydration, heat strokes and doors
swung wide, making houses seem more public than private.
I’ve lived through no drought since 1980, but I’ve known
temperatures so high the numbers don’t make sense.
I’ve known days and weeks without rain. On those days,
dry as brush, I’ve felt my mouth close against the world,
refuse it entry. I’ve watched the skin on my hands
grow thin, lines like dry riverbeds etching the surface,
begging the water to return to this place, this home.
Dana Guthrie Martin is a writer, editor and poet who lives in a
town called Walla Walla, situated in the county seat of
Washington state. She shares her home with her partner, their
chihuahua, and a very old hermit crab named Palmer. Her work
includes The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press, 2009) and
Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books, forthcoming).
town called Walla Walla, situated in the county seat of
Washington state. She shares her home with her partner, their
chihuahua, and a very old hermit crab named Palmer. Her work
includes The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press, 2009) and
Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books, forthcoming).
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