BLACKLIST ME
by Kinsale Drake
for Buffy Sainte-Marie
none of my ancestors are on the radio
none of my ancestors are
but my sister refurbished
an 8-track and I want buffy in her
purest form: NDNs huddled in a basement
somewhere, listening to bootlegged
tapes, except the basement’s
not a basement. it’s a truck bed—
(someone’s uncle’s GMC) wheedling
over a lip of river cuz
the best thing about rock n roll is
you don’t have to do anything right
to survive. you don’t even have
to make sense to a white english
professor who wants chronology
when I want buffy and a truck careening
into the horizon. I want the explosion
as grand as cicadas amping
out the sound of night as the 8-track
rolls and rolls and buffy
lives forever instead of on
some balding president’s blacklist,
and through the smoke I almost want
to mistake a splinter of moonlight
for her yellow dress, all the NDNs
dusting themselves off
and laughing at the smolder,
the little wheel spin and spin
the little wheel spin