“What about my hat, Sister?”

This is a poem of sorts, telling a true story of a DePoe indian boy’s catholic boarding school experience that frankly is too difficult and personal for me to write out as a straightforward story. Someday I will tell it, when it’s right. For now, this is my way of processing this, as is much of my art my way of reconciling a generationally traumatic past.

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There was once a little indian boy,
Black hair shorn short,
Greased back save for a defiant cowlick,
Evening mass at boarding school,
On a freezing blizzard Dakotan night,
What about my hat, Sister,
What about my gloves, Sister,
A stern rebuke for reverance of a brutal god,
No mercy for indian boys,
The ice laden wind whipped a wretched roar,
A cackle of cold heartless brutality,
A threshold between the monster and death,
A reverant Sister dressed in black,
There was once a little indian boy,
Freezing in the night,
What about my hat, Sister,
What about my gloves, Sister,
Gone into the mist,
A heavy door slams as hard as the felling axe,
Little footprints in the midnight snow,
Wiped clean and forgotten,
White like preachers sheets,
Whipping in the frozen dark,
What about my hat, Sister,
What about my gloves, Sister,
Fingers frozen to the bone,
Face frost bitten,
Lungs cold burned,
There once was a little indian boy,
Lost in the stinging ice,
Sent to die by Sister Mary,
Colder than the midnight prairie,
Black hills holler down lodgepole pines,
Now a dream of bitter death,
What old dying songs,
Uttered on chittering child’s teeth,
Heard round blazing fires,
Of his time on summer rivers,
A little indian boy sent to die,
Dreams of brother, father, mother,
What about my hat, Sister,
What about my gloves, Sister.