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Poet Bio:
Sherman Alexie
Sample Poems 
Poverty of Mirrors
What the Orphan Inherits
I Would Steal Horses
Little Big Man
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I Would Steal Horses © 1992 by Sherman Alexie |
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Poet Bio 
Sherman Alexie is an enrolled Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian from Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation. His first book, The Business of Fancydancing, was published by Hanging Loose Press. His poems and stories have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Black Bear Review, Caliban, New York Quarterly, Red Dirt, Slipstream, Zyzzyva, and others. "Native American writing is about survival," Alexie says. "We recently went over one million in population, estimated as 75-90 percent less than the population when whites first arrived in America. With that kind of genocidal philosophy prevalent, it is our strongest tradtion, our longest dance, to remain alive, to survive."
Poetry Poverty of Mirrors You wake these mornings alone and nothing can be forgiven; you drink the last swallow of warm beer from the can beside the bed, tell the stranger sleeping on the floor to go home. It's too easy to be no one with nothing to do, only slightly worried about the light bill more concerned with how dark day gets. You walk alone on moist pavement wondering what color rain is in the country. Does the world out there revolve around rooms without doors or windows? Centering the mirror you found in the trash, walls seem closer and you can never find the right way out, so you open the fridge again for a beer, find only rancid milk and drink it whole. This all tastes too familar.
Copyright ©1992 Sherman Alexie
Back to top What the Orphan Inherits Language I dreamed I was digging your grave with my bare heands. I touched your face and skin fell in thin strips to the ground until only your tongue remained whole. I hung it to smoke with the deer for seven days. It tasted thick and greasy sinew gripped my tongue tight. I rose to walk naked through the fire. I spoke English. I was not consumed. Names I do not have an Indian name. The wind never spoke to my mother when I was born. My heart was hidden beneath the shells of walnuts switched back and forth. I have to cheat to feel the beating of drums in my chest. Alcohol "For bringing us the horse we could almost forgive you for bringing us whisky." Time We measure time leaning out car windows shattering beer bottles off road signs. Tradition Indian boys sinewy and doe-eyed frozen in headlights.
Copyright ©1992 Sherman Alexie
Back to top I Would Steal Horses For Kari for you, if there were any left, give a dozen of the best to your father, the auto mechanic in the small town where you were born and where he will die sometime by dark. I am afraid of his hands, which have rebuilt more of the small parts of this world than I ever will. I would sign treaties for you, take every promise as the last lie, the last point after which we both refuse the exact. I would wrap us both in old blankets hold every disease tight against our skin.
Copyright ©1992 Sherman Alexie
Back to top Little Big Man I got eyes, Jack, that can see an ant moving along the horizon can pull four bottles shattering down from the sky and recognize the eyes of a blind man who told me once, The future is yours and I believed him until he left me without a campfire, without an axe to chop down a tree and build myself a chair, house, cold drink. Jack, how much pain is thre in the world? I think there's only one kind and we all keep moving around it in circles like clumsy pioneers, over the same ground until the landscape becomes so familiar we settle down and call it home. Seems like everybody wants to be an Indian. Why should you be any different, Jack? Still, when you rub the red dirt off your pale nose your little insanities vanish. Listen: the proof is glass. When an Indian looks through a window it's like a mirror. When the Indian looks into a mirror, it's like a window. I know you have dreams, Jack. We all want an acre of land, love, and a full stomach. Without that, we couldn't listen to the wind without anger. But I've been sitting in a cold room watching stars through a hole in the roof. That bright star to the north doesn't have a name I know. Like everything else, it will break my heart.
Copyright ©1992 Sherman Alexie
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