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Linda LeGarde Grover Ojibwe Chi-Ko-ko-koho and the Boarding School Prefect From my owl’s nest home, unsteady greasy oak covered by cowhide long oblivious to claws tough and curving as old tree roots I breathe the night breeze, starry broken glass. I am Chi-Ko-ko-koho. My black-centered unblinking owl eyes see past the dark growl of this old bear den of a bar, through stinging fog of unintended blasphemy, tobacco’s tarry prayers stuck and dusty on a hammered tin ceiling, to grieving spirits mirrored by my own. I am Chi-Ko-ko-koho, young among owls as young among lush crimson blooms of death is the embryonic seedling in my chest, the rooting zygote corkscrew in my chest, these days all but unseen, a pink seaspray sunset on a thick white coffee cup. My grieving spirit hardly notices though, in this old bear den of a bar. My owl head turns clear round when I see him. I am Chi-Ko-ko-koho, I blink away smoke and fog, my head swivels back and he’s still there, the prefect. He’s still there and real, not some ghost back to grab my throat again with those heavy old no-hands of his or crack my brother’s homesick skinny bones on cold concrete tattooed by miseries of other Indian boys who crossed his path. 82 To the darkness of this bear den of a bar he’s brought his own sad spirit for a drink. I am Chi-Ko-ko-koho, but who he sees is Kwiiwizens, a boy bent and kneeling beneath the prefect’s doubled leather strap, and Kwiiwizens I am. My belly feels a tiny worm the color of the moon writhe in laughter at my cowardice as that now embodied ghost, the old prefect step-drags, step-drags his dampened moccasins to my end of the bar. The flowers weep above his toes in mourning for us all. He asks me for a nickel for a beer. With closed eyes Kwiiwizens waits for the strap. Chi-Ko-ko-koho dives from his grimy perch to yank the apparition by the hair, then flies him past the blind face of the moon to drop him in the alley back behind the dark growl of this old bear den of a bar. Indizhinikaaz Kwiiwizens, gaye indizhinikaaz Chi-Ko-ko-koho. Ni maajaa. Mi-iw. I leave him there. I am Chi-Ko-ko-koho. I leave him there under stars of broken glass. I leave him there. 83 ...

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