Indianity
       

A form of Indianness that came from being on the margin.

At powwows when I saw girls dancing I was standing still. I was not taken to powwows as a girl. I did not have a shawl. I did not have turtle-shell leg-rattles. I did not belong to the powwow not even knowing the powwow was there. The words I impose on the page are my dancing. As if the paper on which I wrote were a shawl sewn with awl and bone-needle. Fragments of other fragments and history scraped together. Girls dancing by desert tents. On open plains. Grafted onto the land. A construct over rough terrain.

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Copyright © 2020 Diane Glancy All rights reserved
from New Letters
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission