Read Online Original Fire by Louise Erdrich - Free Book Online

cheeks are the gouged blue of science,
    whose torso springs out of wrung cloth
    blazing ocher, blazing rust, whose blood
    cools to black marble in his fist,
    who makes his father kneel,
    who makes his father say,
    “You want her? Take her.”
    Who rolls the stone from the entrance over his mother,
    who pulls her veil out from under it,
    who ties the stained cloth around his hips
    and starts out,
    walking toward Jerusalem
    where they are gathering in his name.

The Savior
    When the rain began to fall, he rolled back
    into the clouds and slept again.
    Still it persisted, beating at every surface,
    until it entered his body
    as the sound of prolonged
    human weeping.
     
    So he was broken.
    His first tears dissolved
    the mask of white stone.
    As they traveled through the bones of his arms,
    his strength became a mortal strength,
    subject to love.
     
    On earth, when he heard the first rain
    tap through the olive leaves,
    he opened his eyes and stared at his mother.
    As his father, who had made the sacrifice,
    stood motionless in heaven,
    his son cried out to him:
     
    I want no shelter, I deny
    the whole configuration .
    I hate the weight of earth .
    I hate the sound of water .
    Ash to ash, you say, but I know different .
    I will not stop burning .

The Buffalo Prayer
    Our Lady of the Buffalo Bones, pray for us.
    Our Lady of the bales of skins and rotting hulks
    from which our tongues alone were taken,
    pray for us, Our Lady of the Poisoned Meat
    and of the wolves who ate
    and whose tongues swelled until they burst.
    Our Lady of the Eagles Dropping from the Sky,
    Our Lady of the Sick Fox and of the Lurching Hawk
    and of the hunters at the edge of Yellowstone Park waiting
    to rain thunder on the last of us.
    Pray for us, Our Lady of Polaris.
    Our Lady of the Sleek Skidoo.
    Our Lady of Destruction Everywhere
    Our bones were ground into fertilizer
    for the worn-out eastern earth.
    Our bones were burned to charcoal
    to process sugar and to make glue
    for the shoe soles of your nuns and priests.
    Our Lady of the Testicle Tobacco Pouch
    Our Lady of the Box Cars of Skulls,
    pray for us whose bones have nourished
    the ordered cornfields that have replaced
    the random grass
    which fed and nurtured and gave us life.

Rez Litany
    Let us now pray to those beatified
    within the Holy Colonial church
    beginning with Saint Assimilus,
    patron of residential and of government
    boarding schools, whose skin was dark
    but who miraculously bled white milk
    for all to drink.
    To cure the gut aches that resulted
    as ninety percent of Native children are
    lactose intolerant, let us now pray to the
    patron saint of the Indian Health Service,
    who is also guardian of slot machines,
    Our Lady of Luck, she who carries
    in one hand mistaken blood tests and botched
    surgeries and in the other hand the heart
    of a courageous doctor squeezed dry.
    Let us pray for the sacred hearts of all good doctors
    and nurses, whose tasks are manifold and made more difficult
    by the twin saints of commodity food,
    Saint Bloatinus and Saint Cholestrus,
    who were martyred at the stake of body fat
    and who preside now in heaven
    at the gates of the Grand Casino Buffet.
    Saint Macaronia and Saint Diabeta, hear our prayer.
    It is terrible to be diminished toe by toe.
    Good Saint Pyromane,
    Enemy of the BIA,
    Deliver us from those who seek to bury us
    in files and triplicate documents and directives.
    Saint Quantum, Martyr of Blood
    and Holy Protector of the Tribal Rolls,
    assist us in the final shredding which shall proceed
    on the Day of Judgment so we may all rain down
    in a blizzard of bum pull tabs
    and unchosen lottery tickets, which represent
    the souls of the faithfully departed
    in your name.
    Your name written in the original fire
    we mistook so long ago for trader’s rum.
    Pray for us, all you saints of white port
    four roses old granddad and night train.
    Good Saint Bingeous who fell asleep upside down on the cross
    and rose on the third day without even knowing he had