Dear John Wayne

Untitled Slide

• Minnesota in 1954
• Native Themes
• Dartmouth College

August and the drive-in picture is packed. We lounge on the hood of the pontiac surrounded by the slow-burning spirals they sell at the window, to vanquish the horses of mosquitoes. Nothing works. They break through the smoke screen for blood.

Always the lookout spots the Indian first, spread north to south, barring progress. The Sioux or some other Plains bunch in spectacular columns, ICBM missiles, feathers bristling in the meaningful sunset.

The drums break. There will be no parlance. Only the arrows whining, a death-cloud of nerves swarming down on the settelers who die beautifully, tumbling like dust weeds into history that brought us all here together: this wide creen beneath the sign of the bear.

The sky fills, acres of blue squint and eye that the crowd cheers. His face moves over us, a think cloud of vengeance

Pitted like the land that was once flesh. Each rut, each scar makes a promise: It is not over, this fight, not as long as you resist

Everything we see belongs to us. A few laughing Indians fell over the hood slipping in the hot spilled butter. The eye sees a lot, John, but the heart is so blind. Death makes us owners of nothing. He smiles, a horizon of teeth the credits reel over, and then the white fields.

agian blowing in the true-to-life dark. The dark films over everything. We get into the car scratching our mosquito bites, speechless and small as people are when the movie is done. We are back in our skins.

How can we help but keep hearing his voice, the flip side of the soundtrack, still playing:
Come on, boys, we got them where we want them, drunk, running.

They'll give us what we want, what we need. Even his disease was the idea of taking everything. Those cells, burning, doubling, splitting out of their skins.