<b>The Poem I Just Wrote</b> The poem I just wrote is not real. And neither is the black horse who is grazing on my belly. And neither are the ghost… - Joy Harjo

AN AMERICAN SUNRISE We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves, We Were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to Strike It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were Straight. Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We Made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could Sing When we drove to the edge of the mountains, with a drum. We Made sense of our beautiful crazed lives under the starry stars. Sin Was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We Were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them: Thin Chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little Gin Will clarify the dark, and make us all feel like dancing. We Had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz I argued with the music as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June, Forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We.

We are all born within a familial stream of connection. It grows us and in turn we feed it. We live in give and take. That's basic human law, and many indigenous cultures still consciously practice it. (2009)

I think of poetry as a kind of lyricism. I think of poetry as a place beyond words, that we — you know, the paradox is, we use words to get there.