14th Amendment

After she graduated college
In effort to avoid returning to the internment camp
Where her parents were still being held
My grandmother went to teach at a su reservation in South Dakota
Where she learned to drive a stick shift and learned to gut and kill a dear
These are three things I do not know how to do but I also do not know how to leave my parents imprisoned and travel alone by train across a country that has painted my face a red flag so perhaps what we learn is a matter of necessity

In her east coast school where the classrooms were a photo of blue and green eyes most people had never even heard of internment camps
Perhaps what we learn is a matter of convenience
She was extra inc on every page she landed
I never asked her what the su children thought of her
Woman with familiar black hair and unfamiliar eyes
Woman alone unmarried alone women quite and stubborn and stern teacher and stranger and friend I have already written the poem where this country is an abusive husband
And the poem where this country is a neglectful parent
A monster a wound a burden a bad dream a thief but they all turn to ash in my mouth

And still, my grandmother stands at the mouth of a classroom South Dakota and her brother walks out of the camp and is drafted into the US army
Still mother hangs lace curtains and tries to make a horse stall feel like a home
Still her father sits in a barack where there is not any wood to carve so he widdles a peach put into a tiny ring that will one day fit my smallest finger that we learn is a matter of resourcefulness

After the war when her parents were released they wrote to tell her to come home and get married
What we learn is a matter of inheritance
The su mothers’ gifted her moccasins at her wedding and a pair for her first born child
Beaded and bright the softest leather for the smallest feet
I am told they were sad to see her go
Later when her own children go to school bright black eyes spilling across every photo they bring the moccasins for show and tell
They do not bring the hand sewn curtains the peach pit ring or their grandfather's knife or a deer's heart red and pumping for one brief moment still alive in their mothers hands