Everyday is an Odyssey and I Love It

 

(with Artu)

 

Everyday is an odyssey. Today I threw up

in downtown Gallup, New Mexico. I held up

traffic and projected. It was horrible, and

squirming like a worm in the passenger seat

I slowly came back to me with Goodtimes driving

the van east on the eastern strip, late at night

on the rez road, looking for a dark gate, fumbling

with a lock under cell phone light… drive past Harriet’s—

she left the light on, knows you’re coming, has a shotgun,

go through another gate up the hill keep going keep going

keep going turn right past the pond—it was dark dark,

keep going keep going another gate like a cowboy poem

in the wind almost to Crown Pointe, to the house of Zoe,

doctor of veterinary science, teacher, poet. We sat drinking

on her desert-wracked wood porch—under the native sky.

She said, Fuck that Christian shit, I read Tolkien

from a Navajo perspective and I love it.

Then she howled like the moon at her neighbor coyote.

 

—Danny Rosen