Redrez Dogs

BY FEATURED WRITER: SAGE RAVENWOOD

Sage Ravenwood, Godzilla radish, photograph, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

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REDREZ DOGS

Sage Ravenwood | Mar 2022 | Issue 14

Everyone’s blood runs red    Redskin, redneck

One has skin unlike mine    not russet

Place the check mark beside: Other

The same maple leaf burgundy found beneath a scalp

Ye-he tomahawk chop    Fake feather war bonnet whoop

Appropriating sacrilege    please pray for me before

racing home after Sunday service to

pretend Indian (and they call us savages)

Cut my braids    swallow my native tongue

Hypocrisy dressed up injuns

beat us in god’s name

Red    Redrez dogs    Reservation dogs  

I’ve seen how you treat your dogs    chained and unkept

My skin is darker than yours   we bleed the same

The sun kisses the top of hair darker still

Meme our teachings and call it wisdom

Pocahontas is everyone’s favorite Halloween ho

Tell me how your many greats grandmother

was an Indian princess

The language you stole doesn’t know that word

I’m taking back red    Spit it out

I’m giving you indigenous

We’re the ones with a bloody handprint

across our mouths

Red dresses blowing in the wind beside the highway

You’ve been so desperate to be us

When is it your turn to become one of the

missing    murdered    indigenous

Your silence is so loud

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Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat, Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in Glass Poetry - Poets Resist, The Temz Review, Contrary, trampset, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Pioneertown Literary, Grain, Sundress Press anthology - The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry, Gothic Blue Book Volume VI - A Krampus Carol, The Rumpus, Lit Quarterly, PØST, Massachusetts Review, Savant-Garde, ANMLY (Anomaly), Native Skin, River Mouth Review, The Normal School, and more forthcoming.