Category: Poem Of The Day

“Hide like you are ashamed of pigment.
Everyone in Cleveland loves the Indians!
Like it separated you from
Everyone loves them some Indians!
the norm. Love you some Indians.
Tan that hide Be The Indian.
Work beneath suns. Not The Cowboy.
Turn that skin so scarlet it becomes purple in the shade.
Throw on a war bonnet
Add feathers.
Tell me it’s fashion
Add bows and arrows.
Tell me how imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
You are Indian. Go to your local truck stop. Dance.
Buy some dream catchers made from China.
This stadium is your bonfire.
Hang them on your rearview mirror
of You are Indian.
Your Jeep Grand Cherokees,
Your Pontiacs Practice your tomahawk chop.
Your Winnebagos
You are Indian.
As you drive down 1-40 your vehicles catch the dreams
Cheer for the Braves.
Road killed by Manifest Destiny
That have a higher enlisting rate in our armed forces.
The whole time the radio chimes: This land is your land, This land is my land .. .
Cheer for the Kansas City Chiefs
As they take the field for the halftime spectacular
Love you some Indians
Honor them by making them mascots.
Welcome the Seminoles
Turn them into cartoon characters.
As the ghost of Osceola Haunts the end field.
Costume yourselves in crimson paint.
Use blood from Redskins.
Washington Redskins.
Smear it all over.
Don’t change your name
Cover every inch.
Instead hashtag Redskins Pride
Make social media our battleground.
Add big black eyes.
We all know that Indians don’t have Twitter accounts.
Big smile.
We still use smoke signals.
White, white teeth.
Applaud the Cleveland Indians
Don’t forget fake feathers.
Chief Wahoo’s bright white choppers
Cover your skin,
Casting reflections
Don’t tell me it doesn’t come with privilege.”

Transcribed from the video “Love You Some Indians” by Button Poetry and Roanna Shebala.

About The Author

In this spoken word poem, Roanna Shebala addresses the impact of how that horrific destiny is still being perpetuated through systems of violence, like cultural appropriation, pervasive poverty, the prison industrial complex, the sexual assault rate of indigenous women, and the use of indigenous images and names as sport mascots. Discover more poems from Arizona HERE.

I overhear my porcelain teachers clink their teeth together like a toast
in celebration of their tongues,
proud to be so kind.
 
My father borrows a name so he can feed us. 
 
I dream about what he was before he was illegal,
wake up with fingers broken from weaving God’s hair,
two braids, double trinity.
In the temple, ama and I leave our bibles at the end of the bench near the aisle so we can find our seats every Sunday.
Prayers only work if you close your eyes. 
 
I was born with my nana’s lips but this voice is mine only. 
It’s not green, white, and red.
It’s not red, white, and blue. 
It’s rain in a silver bucket. 
 
At home, the men pluck their eyes out while they eat dinner.
The world would end if we saw them cry. 
 
Mexicans are such hard workers.
Mexicans are such
hard workers.
Mexicans are workers. 
Mexicans work.
Mexican, work! Work, Mexican, work!
 
Mexicans are such hard workers.
They say it like it’s an honor to watch my father die.

About the Author

Anna Flores is a Nogales-born poet whose work delves into the intersections of Diné identity, intersectional feminism, and social justice. A graduate of Arizona State University’s MFA program, Flores’s poetry reflects her dedication to cultural expression and activism. For more about her work and journey, read her full bio here.

I prefer red chile over my eggs
and potatoes for breakfast.
Red chile ristras decorate my door,
dry on my roof, and hang from eaves.
They lend open-air vegetable stands
historical grandeur, and gently swing
with an air of festive welcome.
I can hear them talking in the wind,
haggard, yellowing, crisp, rasping
tongues of old men, licking the breeze.

            But our grandmother loves green chile.
When I visit her,
she holds the green chile pepper
in her wrinkled hands.
Ah, voluptuous, masculine,
an air of authority and youth simmers
from its swan-neck stem, tapering to a flowery
collar, fermenting resinous spice.
A well-dressed gentleman at the door
my grandmother takes sensuously in her hand,
rubbing its firm glossed sides,
caressing the oily rubbery serpent,
with mouth-watering fulfillment,
fondling its curves with gentle fingers.
Its bearing magnificent and taut
as flanks of a tiger in mid-leap,
she thrusts her blade into
and cuts it open, with lust
on her hot mouth, sweating over the stove,
bandanna round her forehead,
mysterious passion on her face
as she serves me green chile con carne
between soft warm leaves of corn tortillas,
with beans and rice–her sacrifice
to her little prince.
I slurp from my plate
with last bit of tortilla, my mouth burns
and I hiss and drink a tall glass of cold water.

All over New Mexico, sunburned men and women
drive rickety trucks stuffed with gunny-sacks
of green chile, from Belen, Veguita, Willard, Estancia,
San Antonio y Socorro, from fields
to roadside stands, you see them roasting green chile
in screen-sided homemade barrels, and for a dollar a bag,
we relive this old, beautiful ritual again and again.

About the Author

Jimmy Santiago Baca is a celebrated Chicano poet, memoirist, and activist who rose from a troubled childhood and years spent in prison to become one of America’s most profound literary voices. His works often explore themes of identity, oppression, and personal transformation. Baca’s poetry captures the raw power of survival and resilience, making his voice a crucial one in contemporary American literature. For more about his remarkable journey and work, read his full bio here.

Welcome to Outside.
Press START to begin.
Good luck!

You zone into Des Plaines, Illinois; early 2000s.
The poplars rise from green plots in front of boxy houses.
You watch the other preteens skate down Westview Drive
and think how easy it would be to be them.

You make Mom buy you a board.
You bleach your hair, but it comes out orange, so you lie.
“Yes, I like it like this!” you yell when other kids ask you about it.

Then you hear a soft voice whisper, “Roll a Bluff check.”

Shift to black.
A twenty-sided die bounces through the blankness of your imagination
and lands facing 1.

NATURAL ONE. Automatic failure.
No one believes you meant to make your hair orange.
A bully makes fun of you.
You spend the next week listening exclusively to Fallout Boy.

Are you struggling?
Would you like to see a help menu?
Maybe hit up a tutorial?
Too bad, Friend: there is no tutorial,
there is no help, and you can’t start over.

Press START to continue. Good luck!

You zone into Phoenix, Arizona; 2000-teens.
You tell your girlfriend you love her.
She says she wants to see other people.

FLAWLESS VICTORY!
THE CAMERA FREEZES TO CAPTURE YOUR HEART
SHATTERING INTO A THOUSAND PIECES,
BLASTING LIKE SHRAPNEL THROUGH YOUR CHEST CAVITY!
FATALITY!

Stop crying! Is this game too hard?
Maybe you want to pick a different character?
No such luck! In Outside, you’re stuck
being the same til the game is over.

Sometimes it feels like God made real life too much like Dark Souls.
Sometimes it feels like I have to kill myself over and over
just to get by these obstacles, just to get by,
that I have to memorize the ways
this world’s trying to murder me just to survive.

Why this learning curve?
Why is Outside so hard?
Think about it long enough,
you start to realize it’s to keep our generation
from getting to the end game.

And who made it this way?
Was it the moderators?
Maybe the game designers?
No, Newbie: the Baby Boomers did it.

See, they bought Outside before we ever could,
been playing it since we were babies.
It was a board game for them, like Monopoly.
Now, it’s virtual reality,
fully immersive, but we’re still rolling dice.

Wake up and grind only to die to a Random Number Generator.

Why do I roll so low?
How can my d20 come up close to zero so many times?

I know! These Baby Boomers bought and burned all the strategy guides;
they’ve been bogarting the Game Sharks,
keeping secret the cheat codes.

But they can’t hide forever.
Our generation are hackers.
We will see the glitches and exploit them. We will climb up walls and save our allies
using unlocked weapons, infinite ammo, God Mode.

The Baby Boomers will be too arthritic
to use the controls; they can’t defeat us.
We will frag them, send them back to the starting zone,
and claim this world for ourselves.

Welcome to Outside 2.0.
Player 2 has joined the game. Good luck!

About The Author

Thomas Cooper is an Arizona poet from Chicago, Illinois who lived and worked as a teacher in Arizona. Learn more about him and more poets of Arizona HERE.

The cactus in the desert stands 
    Like time’s inviolate sentinel, 
Watching the sun-washed waste of sands
     Lest they their ancient secrets tell. 
And the lost lore of mournful lands
     It knows alone and guards too well. 

Wiser than Sphynx or pyramid, 
     It points a stark hand at the sky, 
And all the stars alight or hid 
     It counts as they go rolling by;
And mysteries the gods forbid
     Darken its heavy memory. 

I asked how old the world was—yea,
     And why yon ruddy mountain grew
Out of hell’s fire. By night nor day 
     It answered not, though all it knew, 
But lifted, as it stopped my way, 
     Its wrinkled fingers toward the blue 

Inscrutable and stern and still 
     It waits the everlasting doom. 
Races and years may do their will—
     Lo, it will rise above their tomb, 
Till the drugged earth has drunk her fill
     Of light, and falls asleep in gloom. 

About the Author

Harriet Monroe was the publisher of Poetry and frequent letter writer to many influential poetry lovers in the state of Arizona.

Arizona

Here’s to the land of the rock and the cactus,
The sun and the sand and the sky,
Where the weather is hot and the tourists are flocking,
And the cowboys are riding high.
Here’s to the land where the copper is gleaming,
The land of the orange and vine,
Here’s to the land of the mountain and mesa,
Where hearts are as warm as the clime.

About the Author

James William Foley (1874–1939) was an American poet known for his work that often reflected the landscapes and life in the American West.

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Deserted

Deserted are the canyons,
And the mesas wide and bare,
The rivers run in silence,
Through the lands that none may share.
The peaks are wrapped in shadows,
And the winds that sweep the plain,
Bring no whisper of a footstep,
Nor the echo of a name.

About the Author

John Charles Van Dyke (1856–1932) was an American art historian and critic who also wrote poetically about the desert landscapes of the American Southwest.

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In the Arizona Desert

In the Arizona desert,
Where the sun is fierce and high,
Where the purple shadows gather
Underneath the cloudless sky;
There the silent mountains beckon,
And the lonely mesas call,
There the cactus blooms in splendor,
And the golden poppies fall.

About the Author

Charles S. Wortley was a lesser-known poet who captured the stark beauty of the Arizona desert in his works.

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