do you think anger is
love divided
into long
sleeps to right
this weight / I cannot
sleep in the dream
of you
I see you
at all the funerals
when my name was good
I haven’t had rhubarb
since grandma died and
your name whitechalks
a tendering softsick
, the virgin mary in
my chin dimple watches
me get outta hand
Copyright © 2025 by m.s. RedCherries. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 3, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“My work is interested in the relationship between the United States government and Tribal Nations under the ongoing and oppressive federal Indian trust responsibility and how this doctrine affects Native peoples’ perceptions of place and personhood with us [as] individuals but also as ‘wards’ of the American government, in a country that occupies our own. This poem wrestles you as a lover, a father, or as america—the Great White Father—and asks, do you love me?”
—m.s. RedCherries
m.s. RedCherries received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a JD from Arizona State University College of Law. She is the author of mother (Penguin Books, 2024), a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.