WAR Poem: Vanilla Custard, by Matt Cooper

This morning I looked at the photo book filled
With pictures of Indian Massacre sites and treaty signings again.
While I looked at the photos of places where
Indians used to live, I ate a bowl of vanilla custard.
The custard tasted good.
Though, it tasted like it shouldn’t be here.
The sweet cream, it tasted like
None of this, none of us
Should be here.
It tasted like the marrow of the Pontiacs.
It tasted like Metacomet’s head on a pike
At the gates of Plymouth
For a quarter of a century.
It tasted like sable hair that changed dirty blonde
So we could hide.
It tasted like keeping the mother tongue a secret.
The custard tasted like
Battles that can only be won from the outskirts of heaven
And from shitters in the worst junkyards of hell.
The custard tasted like the keeper of the plains
And how it’s just bit of art to look at
But not an altar to bow to
And recall the lives we lived then
Shouting in our dreams and forgetting
Waċiƞ yaƞpi, Waċiƞ yaƞpi, Waċiƞ yaƞpi
Otoka’he! Ho-Kah’He’!
God the Custerd tasted like basketball courts In Creek graveyards
In Alabama so the Ghosts might keep playing.
It tasted like living on despite the dying of the
Memory of all the death.
It tasted, The custer’d, like speaking in tongues,
Sounding of Demons to the priest and,
Sounding of sages to our children left.
But I sat there with a smile
Swishing that goddamn custer’d in my teeth
Knowing that sweetness is born
Of all the dried up tears and voices that echo
Without any lips
If we listen to the dirt
Knowing that
It will in fact
Whisper—
Just
After.

Author: poetryfest

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