Sharron Proulx-Turner
N S  — e ———

understanding the dreams would help

and so she dances

dances right there on top of the teachers desk

on account of she needs the extra space

kids all in the windows see them crows

cold-dulled and scrawny

over on the telephone lines up for air or rapid water

firey cold and tossing a silver spoon

singing hold me hold me love me hush hold me hold me love me hush
sweet harmony and residues of something unnameable

waiting for that moment for the my the me of love

thought memories in print and bouncing off them wires

all crowy wavy lines outrageous

right through them windows and in to that old lady

by this time everyone even all them teachers line up in the halls
even the principal that girl’s in a league all her own

and so she dances hurt angry threatened on guard left out

a receptacle for poison verbal poison voice is sacred spewing in
the air invisible erased

case history case closed

at school they told her she was a no-good slut

said she’d have a baby like all the rest of them squaw-girls

a system made to measure for the gang

prettify the language faking calm for flat bare hate

content to cruel and back again

that’s the year it snowed right through the spring and into june
that’s when she was twelve years old

ashamed of her fear

hides away shaking fetal lost in the view

breaking through the pain

starting at the back the way she looks at magazines

reads between the stories sees the lies

that’s when she fills out one of them ads for manure delivery
bills it to the school

they say they flew in that manure all the way from texas
dumped it right there in front of the school

principal couldn’t do a darn thing on account of the snow
blocked the view from the windows poop and snow poop and snow
sure smelled around that school and all the way over at them
badlands and deep deep in the pines

that’s when all the ravens drop in for a while

27