Here, during the break in the poetry reading at the Barbican, we all line up with our heads bowed, an asymmetry of gold glitter splashed on white porcelain, and no one talking but breathing softly, released, and now at ease in the after- time of poet and piper s mastery, holding our own counsel. I park the pickup next to my trailer home, enter the kitchenette, open a chilled six-pack of Schlitz. Joseph Schlitz drowned when the Friedrich Schiller sank off Land s End, England. We are still alive. I drink therefore I am.
Vodka is the great white spirit.
Once it was different. Our people were herded into reservations like bison, but before the advent of barbed wire the world was ours. Joseph Glidden of De Kalb, Illinois, mass- produced the stuff from 1873. It sealed our fate. Today we Crow neighbour the equally dispossessed Cheyenne, who border the Custer National Forest.