why pretend to get along here

get on up to Missoula at least

just do me a favor and

get the fuck out of Butte

poison red ruby lake

crackhead air

roofs blowing sky high

how many signs do you need

one dumb little joint that sells organic bread

salty pumpkin seeds in a coffee can

like as though they were going to philosophically save this town

from suicide and mutilation

just get out

blow on across the Little Blackfoot

phosphate and Philipsburg

make tracks for rosy Cutthroat

three-pound Browns

get it completely out of your head

that you'll ever settle in

warm and toasty

with a dog that never sheds

and a big-hipped woman

who thinks the sun rises and sets

on your miserable toothless head

Ft. Robinson, Nebraska

(Highway 20) I pick up this common gray stone on the spot where Crazy Horse was killed; September 5, 1877. It looks a little like a hawk's beak with a dark crooked ridge running across the back. It's hot from lying out flat in the sun for who knows how long. No telling if it might have been kicking around back then; a dumb witness to the outrageous murder. Catholics might call this stone a "second-class relic," since there's no proof of its origins, only the association with the place. I drop it deep in my pocket, on top of my black jackknife. It's warm down there. Who knows if it holds any power. I guess we'll find out somewhere down the road.

I am crying in my heart, after the manner of white men.

-KIT CARSON

Wounded Knee,

Pine Ridge Reservation

The large metal sign on the dusty shoulder of Highway 27, explaining, front and back, the horrific events that took place here in December 1890, has been altered. The word battle has been covered over with a patchwork metal plate riveted to the sunbleached narrative reading massacre in bold black letters. "Massacre" replaces "battle," as if that's all the correction we need to alter our thinking about it. As if now we are able to digest the actuality of carnage, one hundred and twenty years in our past.

Pathetic little lean-tos roofed with pine boughs shelter wrinkled-up Lakota women selling beaded crafts and crude jewelry. It's 103 degrees and the wind is swirling across the broken highway sending up dust devils. White plastic coffee cups and potato chip bags go whipping by. A dark hawk high above a field of burnt grass tumbles and swoops through the hot-air currents, hoping for some sign of varmints below. I decide to park beside a line of glittering Harleys directly across the highway from the monument; thinking that driving up the hill to the sight might be disrespectful. There's also some nagging notion that walking up the hill in this sledgehammer heat might be some slight form of penance. (I don't know where these notions of guilt originate.) I'm staring down at my boots in the powdery clay as I climb toward the two brick columns, arched by a steel span with a small cross in the middle. "Walking through time," I whisper. I reach the top and pull out my disposable Kodak that I've been using to record catch-and-release Rainbows. I've only got a couple shots left. As I'm trying to focus on the raggedy monument, a boy's face jumps into the frame then darts back out. A skinny teenage Lakota boy with wide eyes and a crooked smile. He peeks out at me from behind one of the brick columns. I take my eye away from the lens and see two more boys hiding behind the structures. I call out to them and ask if I can take their picture in front of the monument. They shyly reveal themselves, barefoot in grimy T-shirts, clutching aluminum cans of Pepsi. I ask if they can bunch together under the steel arch. They giggle and line up facing me then, suddenly, as I raise the Kodak to my eye, they all throw their fists to the sky mimicking the Black Panther salute of the sixties. I have no idea what era I'm living in.

Rosebud, South Dakota

(Highway 83 North) Shitty little government A-frames spit out across the Sandhills. Not a human in sight. Just evidence: Ripe garbage piled high. Bullet holes in every window. Flapping black plastic. Three-quarter ply nailed across the doors like hurricane protection but there's only an ocean of sand. Wailing. You can hear its constant moan. Yellow sunburned sandbox slides. Bright red plastic swings. No kids to speak of. Backyards way too far from the house. Prairie swallows them all up. Lakota church, "Open to Anyone," it says, but no one's here. Not a single sorry soul. And it's the Sabbath too. Imagine that. Sunday abandoned. Just constant wind ripping across the tattered yards and buried fences. Constant endless prairie breath. Like it's always been. Now and evermore. Unrelenting. Raw. And could care less about the state of the Union.

I thought there was a hawk

sitting at the bar