Notes from One [Indigenous] Boy to America

1. Forgive me for I have something to say
2. Everything is in the language we use. – Layli Long Soldier [This means the world to me]
3. 13:34, it’s raining again
4. First of all, I’m quite shy [so I’ll try my best]
5. I mark the white page & erase what dark I’ve made
6. Let me begin again
7. I watch my people arrested at night
8. What I saw: their wrists gleaming with moonlight
9. ’anoqónma, my uncle says / meaning, indigenous
10. Question: are there enough metaphors to sink the world? Or to keep it moving?
11. Sometimes, standing in the rain makes me feel more alive—why is that?
12. My cousin has two long braids that reach down his body—& for that, I’m so happy
13. See your mouth—our lips want nothing but to be this red
14. The whole world was water once / don’t you remember?
15. 21:07, I want my mother / to know I love her
16. Bones speak / bones, speak
17. Stop & listen to the silence between us
18. What might that mean?
19. Some of us are more afraid than others
20. Note to self: every word I’ve ever spoken was & is laced with water, a burning water
21. Question: have you stared at your fingerprints in the window?
22. Immediate thought: the only proof of your humanity / sometimes / that you were here
23. How might we prove we’re really alive? / Too deep? Too soon? Maybe.
24. Let them say: the dead coded you like this: hidden in your fingertips
25. Touch me / I promise I’m only a body with a heart beating
26. With enough loss / of light / you see yourself / in the glass
27. Note to self: every ghost in your bones moves you
28. That’s life / sometimes
29. My student / who wrote notes in Sharpie to himself on his arms / died of thirst in a field
30. Internet comment duly noted: we won the war so shut the hell up
31. You were made flesh from so many
32. (-continued-) rifle blows
33. Another internet comment: let the dogs eat them DAMN DOG EATERS
34. Have you looked in the mirror & said: you are a graveyard
35. I have
36. I warp the mirror only by standing there / only by thinking of you, America
37. Touch yourself in the dark (any way necessary) because you are
38. (-continued-) a pleasure to be alive
39. Question: have you heard voices when looking at a puddle of rain?
40. It rained yesterday too
41. Imagine: the rain leaping up from the field / like locusts
42. I made my yáaca’ cry from an ocean away / from laughing
43. Because memories of joy between us keep our blood in motion
44. I wanted to know the body / was all we had
45. Trying to remember how my skin felt after someone said: fucking Indians
46. By the way: here you are / my god / Gentle Reader / because I’m praying & you’re listening
47. Thank you / qe’ciyéw’yew’
48. The loneliest word is the one you have inside you but haven’t spoken yet
49. To learn to make love in another language / I cried that night
50. All that was left—bodies remembering—breath, now gone, still wetting the mouth
51. No, the body is built to bear the dead
52. My grandfather’s tap water is the best in the world / I swear
53. It’s good for your blood, says my uncle [who sees better in his one eye than I can with both]
54. I was made because it was dark—& somebody was missing
55. Undress & stare at yourself / smile / that is you
56. Put your hand to your chest & say something like: a house with everyone inside
57. I’m part monster, part animal, part water, part story, part song, part trickster, always blood meeting water & sprinkled on the earth
58. You breathe / my heart can’t help / but react
59. …gather the senses, but I say, gather your hands, dearly beloved
60. In my mother’s tiny red Honda hatchback, the radio plays: dearly beloved, we are gathered here today
61. (-continued-) to get through this thing called life. & I’ve loved Prince ever since.
62. You are passing through your life, like [a. a season, b. a child playing in limbo, c. a clock, d. all of the above]
63. In the field, at the massacre site, I wept & wept while my classmates watched
64. Question: do you dream of me?
65. After the rain finishes, I will ask: will you remember me this way?
66. First frost of the year means: yes, even breath touches earth & stays
67. Question: how to clear the air if the air is all your loss?
68. I gave you America what it wanted but I kept something
69. On my mother’s Facebook post, I write: to be in this skin is a resistance
70. On my friend’s Facebook post, I write: indigenous existence = oxymoron
71. One headphone shorts &—suddenly—the same song is something I’ve never heard before
72. The sparrows broke across the rice field / leaving behind a naked tree
73. I love you all / I swear
74. Or in other words: ’óykaloo, ’eetx heetiwíse
75. Please: look in my eyes—that’s all I ask
    

Bones Where People Once Stood

are the bones left still / talking through the night / as if nobody had moved / at all & once / all I wanted was for my mouth / to fill with rainwater / to know the stars / yes, the stars / were draining enough of our paradise / our dead left walking c’ewc’éewnim / ’ískit we say / when the road was made / by ghosts dragged along / & leaving only the white smoke of their lives / behind me & my one acre- / shaped body separated / into how many / opened graves like a lifetime of forgotten nights / we breathe / & always see how / America tastes / when dripping / on exiled tongues / the water touching skin / so like blood / is the same water that once entered / the marrow / & stayed & let / our hushed ghosts / move / once more.

Chanel #5 bottle, water from the Yellowstone River after the 2015 oil spill

American buffalo hair, makeup compact

Coyote skull, 2015 Pantone color of the year: Marsala 18-1438

Red and white opaque beads, Bakken crude oil

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life—not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life—not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life—not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life—not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life—not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life—not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life—not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn’t discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life—not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the eighties—the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.