Peter Knight's Web Site
Things for me, friends, family... and passers by

decorative bar

Found and liked PREVIOUS NEXT
Number 12: Sherman Alexie's poem "At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School"

 

From "The Business of Fancydancing" by Sherman Alexie, Hanging Loose Press 1992. 

 

The poem is headed "from the photograph by Skeet McAuley"

extracts:

"... On those Saturday afternoons,
unbroken horses gather to watch

their sons growing larger
in the small parts of the world.
Everyone is the quarterback.

There is no thin man in a big hat
writing down all the names
in two columns: winners and losers...

...Before the game is over,
the eighth-grade girls' track team

comes running, circling the field,
their thin and brown legs echoing
wild horses, wild horses, wild horses."

 

 

 

 


Photo by Skeet McAuley

 

 

I found the poem originally at http://www.hanksville.org/voyage/poems/NavajoSchool.html and it's also out there on
Google Books in the anthology Learning by Heart

but with strict copyright rules, so I won't copy out the whole thing here!