To Believe in Making Friends with Birds
by Matt Cooper
Recipe For a Poet
for Jaryd
1. 12 oz. Passion
2. 7 oz. Erudition
3. ½ college degree in creative writing
4. 1 baker’s dozen trips to the psych ward
5. 1 whole 5 oz. bottle of Cholula
6. Knowledge of what frybread is.
(And the phone number of my friend in
Pine Ridge who knows the proper way to make it)
Preparation:
≻Mix all ingredients in an old Stanley thermos
(Preferably the one your grandaddy
carried with him in Vietnam).
≻Shake thoroughly until all ingredients
have stopped bitching, moaning and otherwise
drowning out the sound of the music.
≻ Drink and enjoy responsibly.
Waltzing Matilda
for Sarah
The
Devil he took tears
From us to fill his coffers
And made his billions
On our broken hearts then.
But sitting here in the
Afterglow of the war
Now we are free.
Idiot Shawl
A response to “A Coat”, by W.B. Yeats
I knit his poem a shawl
Adorned with all the symbols
Of the ghost dance and the chiefs
From waist to gullet.
Though, some idiots bought it—
Flaunted it to the elders
As though they fought this
Crying song. Let them wear
Our forebears’ hide!
For there are far
Better limericks
Scribbled buck naked.
Envoy:
If the Kodiak mama
Came and took us
In the night and fed
Our still warm hearts
To her cubs
We’d be more free.
The Bard from Climax, Kansas
for Tom Petty
The young boy feigned a beat steady.
The lute laughed. This lad ain’t ready.
Til’ the Palladium screamed his name.
Ol’ Berry’s ghost knew this was fame.
Pops said, “God said play some Petty.”
Life by the Drop
for Sterling
My Navy-Man grandaddy
Asked me this past spring
If I’d bring a guitar to his funeral.
He told me nothing
Would make him happier than if
I’d show up and sing Willie Nelson’s
Version of, “Amazing Grace”,
At the service with a cowboy hat on
When it’s his time
To ramble on up north—
The car crash was two weeks later
And I crushed my left arm—
The doctor tells me I need pins
In the middle finger
Of my fretting hand—
When I asked him if I’d ever
Play again, his lips said maybe.
But his eyes said no—God snaps
His fingers in time and that thrill done gone.
I’d rather go blind, boy.
Descendants
Love abides so we can hear Africa.
Killing all recollection of the buffalo
They snuffed us out in the Sahara
and left just enough water
in lake Chad
and gouged just enough
white faces
into the
black hills—
to try and pilfer
our last crop: hope.
BIO: I am a teacher and lifelong writer from Wichita, Kansas. I've been a journalist in Kansas. I've been a journalist in Japan. It's all the same to me. I am the son of a Lakota mother and an Irish-American father. It's good blood to have. It is my most precious hope that I can tell my parents’ story to those all around willing to listen. Mixed-Indigenous families surround you in all the commons of America. They pass right in front of your eyes everyday—and most of them will tell you exactly where they come from—right here.