Sample Poems by J.P. Dancing Bear
Beads and Braids
He has a memory of beads
passing the thumb and finger
like counting.
Upset old women who see everything,
grieving for the daughter, the sister,
the granddaughter who once danced
her braids around them.
He wants to leave,
push the hands from their polished
beads still cycling through.
His mother is a corpse
and the words the prayers the songs
slice his chest, rattle his ribs.
His mother's hair braided
in a way he has never seen—
the knots of the dead
like beads wanting to move
between the thumb and finger
counting out these slow days.
Feral Cats
Father at 3 in the afternoon,
drunk, asleep,
in the hungry hold
of an old sofa.
No more than six years old,
Billy is outside
staring down feral cats.
Their eyes yellow
in the broad shadowy leaves.
They speak to him,
fill his belly with words
about hunting and trust,
what is known
by claws and teeth.
Billy knows.
He says, I will survive,
and the cats say,
we will survive,
and Billy smiles
a coyote smile.
Where the Women Go
Three funerals in eight months—
all cancer.
His grandmother and two aunts,
gone before the cranes have returned.
There is no one for Billy
to stay with after school.
Like a beacon the city
to the south lights up
the night sky.
He wonders if this is where
the spirits go.
Do they well together
in the collective pool
of the ghost world.
The men talk about pollution,
the water, how someone should
blow up the power plant.
It’s all crazy talk, says one.
Some of us got jobs there.
Someone else says,
who needs a job,
when our women are dying.