Red
Mupits’ breath, in moonlight, outside a child’s bedroom window
Hunter’s bones scattered on the prairie
Fragrance of Comanche gangstas who entered The Zoo Club
and assassinated the bosses of Underworld Seven,
a Navajo crime syndicate
Little Stoney Burgess’s footprints after catching ghost sickness
by running through Post Oak Cemetery chased
by snot-nosed bully, Blender Plenty Bear
Blue
Lips of the poisoned tribal chairman collapsed on the buffet table
at the 1974 Comanche Nation Inaugural Dinner
Silk handkerchief drawn over the stuffed owl used to converse
with the dead
In the woods, it’s the laughter of Deer Woman as she stomps
her male victim to death
Electric guitar distortion of the Messiah playing Jimi Hendrix’s
Machine Gun as she strolls into the Indian bar
Yellow
Coyote’s eyes in the darkness of the backseat at midnight
as you speed down Mt. Scott, on a dare, with the headlights off
Crushed buffalo kidney stones used in graffiti to magically
imprison the river-witch underneath the I-44 bridge
Intricate beadwork on Lucifer’s cane
left at the funnel cake stand at Comanche Fair
Flashing ignition light to the engines of the great abyss
Sy Hoahwah, “Colors of the Comanche Nation Flag” from Velroy and the Madischie Mafia. Copyright © 2009 by Sy Hoahwah.
Source: Velroy and the Madischie Mafia (West End Press, 2009)
A member of the Comanche Nation, Sy Hoawah’s family descends from both the Yapaituka/Penatuka Comanche and the Bad Faces band of the Southern Arapaho. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Hoahwah was raised in Arkansas and southwestern Oklahoma. He is a direct descendent of Comanch orator and principal chief Ten Bears, and of the Arapaho leader, Little Raven. Hoahwah earned an MFA from the University of Arkansas and is the author of . . .
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Poems by Stuart Youngman "Sy" Hoahwah
