The Dogs on the Rez Speak Lakota
Indian Reservation dogs
Are teenagers run wild,
Hanging around gas stations
And grocery stores;
Dozing in shadows
Or gathered on corners,
Staying out after dark,
No one calling them home.
Sore-pawed
Tourist-hustlers,
Patch-furred
Trash-rustlers,
Whip-tailed and hungry,
Long-legged and lean;
Teeth sharpened on pine cones,
Surviving
The ticks, fleas,
And porcupine quills.
They roam invisible spaces
Between American highways,
In their eyes, the secret landmarks
Of legend’s terrain;
Four-footed emblems
Of ancestral nomads,
In liminal places
Ignoring defeat,
They remain.
- Jean Kavanagh
