Backstage at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary

Callaloo 19.1 (1996) 13-20

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SISTER (Y)OUR MANCHILD AT THE CLOSE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Claire Harris

  Dream warrior day after day my sister watches him haunt weathered grass his face defines time into sight stalk still kill his small body stippled with shadowy leaf with stem crouched down into maleness her beautiful man who kills Cat explodes over the stream to the neighbour's yard not dead tho' he leaps bang bang pudgy legs finding the death stamp his face radiant she watches him day after day carving away chunks of soul of tenderness empathy awe each day more hollow each day after cops-an-criminals after Settlers-an-Indians stones like teeth WARS ON DRUGS WARS ON CRIME WARS ON DRUNK DRIVERS WARS after the unread books the screen's fraudulent epiphanies after hours staring down the mirror dreaming his future in its skinny arms after a musty locker room stalking the girl who cd/wd who deserved it suddenly he is 18 swallowed by that image where exultant cameras linger caress lightning smiles O thunderclaps in high fives golden warriors drunk on the death of 'cockroaches'/'sand niggers' in that other garden old Eden Iraq time's a rubber band a bottomless well my sister watches as if she'd never love again she watches Sister's son leaves leaves his moist childhood (as if he did not know he'd  run up stairs was lodged in her heart) goes from her quiet warmth her sly jests his place in her voice he goes from her from my sister as if he had no past eager he goes to the marines to the running foul grunting sweet guns to stalking hunting killing to old savage pieties slicked into smoothness his cap tossed to presidential air in Harper's Magazine John Lukacs writes the essence of. . . . "revolutionary movements sputtering in the oddest places of the so-called Third World was a tribal hatred of foreign, in most cases white power. That this kind of hatred was, in most instances, as unjustified as it was short sighted is another matter." massive this blindness to the human heart such poverty puffs the will commodifies even dignity signalling like dead grain elevators on the prairie a small town narrowed to hamlet in such a mind the world glimpsed through the wavering aura of migraine five/ten million Africans trapped branded transported twice five/ten dying in the attempt the three hundred years of slavery rape its terrible aftermath otherness fear and police boots batons bullets joblessness fear invisibility the ceaseless niagaras of difficulty that idiot's tape measure fear we who have as wings only hope only the feather's bruising courage to make it come out even  a small thing a footnote of history in such a mind the depopulation of vivid teeming Americas brown peoples wrenched from the circle to vacancy the land despoiled bewildered wo/men Alcohol Lakes children Davis Inlets bereft ancestors mountains in such eyes death bone-white and richly dressed in silks sits down to feast on the dark the innocent mountains of dark dead the growing mountains of dead without tenderness in such a mind a small thing mere detail to evoke the historian's nostalgia prick the midget soul Were the Turks still in charge of Mesopotamia, were the Spanish of Cuba, the British of India, wouldn't we be better off? And wouldn't their subject peoples be better off? my sisters the white man's burden is still borne on the backs of Africans Asians Aboriginal peoples women children the bearing enforced by fists and bombs in such a mind subjugation is a gift in such a mind the mutilation of peoples planet skies in such a mind AIDS? (Atlanta: culture of vaccine in monkey's blood to be tested in Central Africa?) the cigarette's cancer chemical abuse and shifted nuclear wastes new greeds dead Romany Jews Palestinians in such a mind lost graces decencies knowledge bled resources the common humanity shattered into us and them...