Promised Land Poem by Leo Yankevich

Rousseau’s brave savages
had circled her covered wagon,
leaving vestiges
of life that could have been:

dreams of a promised land,
a son and rag-doll daughter,
a scalped Scottish husband,
and not a drop of water.

Raping her on the prairie
from nightfall to red dawn,
they did not call her “Mary, ”
but “whore of the Cheyenne.”

They tethered her with rope,
taught her new kinds of pain,
her only living hope:
the fury of white men.

Years later she would watch
the braves flee cannon shot,
the chief squeal like a wretch,
the buffalo meat rot.

Three blows with a hatchet
would prove her only saviour,
a scalped head and a facelift.
And no tears could raise her.