War by Alessandro Manzetti

Author:Alessandro Manzetti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Published: 2018-06-04T00:00:00+00:00

THE LONG WALK TO HELL

by Marge Simon

“I do not believe that the Great Spirit Chief gave

one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men

what they must do.” —Chief Josef

And so it began, that Long Walk,

thousands of miles to somewhere else,

as many and more of the Cheyenne dying

along the cold road to hell.

Soldier James dreams of saloons

with pretty ladies dancing,

white shoulders flashing,

sweet perfume, the whore-musk

between their pale thighs.

He returns his mind to duty,

herding his shuffling sheep,

oily haired and smelling of shit,

drooling blood with every cough.

He sees the skinny kid who keeps

chewing off pieces of his own arm—

kid knows he’s asking to get shot

for turning loco—Serge’s rule,

wonders why the fuckers won’t fight back.

He thinks of grabbing a certain bitch’s braid,

the comely one, her stomach full with child,

dragging her into the bushes for a poke, when

Serge ain’t looking; she’s as good as dead anyway,

no stopping for birthing a Cheyenne brat.

His brother was at the Sand Creek

slaughter of a Colorado Cheyenne camp—

women, children, men too old to fight.

He got inspired, wrote home like a poet:

“Under the fierce flashing orb

of the prairie sun, a comrade’s hand

helped me stuff a guy’s mouth

with his genitals—young kid or old man,

I wasn’t sure, they all looked alike,

with blood between their legs,

like a woman’s monthly curse.

We cut the squaws’ breasts too,

they make righteous fine purses.

Lord knows these heathens

must have done it to our own.

But when it was all over,

after the screaming stopped,

there was such a stillness

as the sun died in the west,

we could hear the shadows rising

from the tumbleweed and brush.”

That last letter was months ago.

An icy wind was blowing from the north,

James shivers, pushes his hat down low,

going to be a night of bitter cold ahead.

*The Cheyenne’s “Trail of Tears”, 1838

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