121 words

Rousseau’s brave savages

had circled her covered wagon,

leaving vestiges

of life that could have been:

dreams of a promised land,

a son and rag-doll daughter,

a scalped Scottish husband,

and not a drop of water.

Raping her on the prairie

from nightfall to red dawn,

they did not call her “Mary,”

but “whore of the Cheyenne.”

They tethered her with rope,

taught her new kinds of pain,

her only living hope:

the fury of white men.

Years later she would watch

the braves flee cannon shot,

the chief squeal like a wretch,

the buffalo meat rot.

Three blows with a hatchet

would prove her only saviour,

a scalped head and a facelift.

And no tears could raise her.

23 February 2014