I Hear He's a Winner

massively the amazon passes under giant water lilies like a slow road off this vein of the jungle a Sateré-Mawé boy plunges his hand into a glove made of bullet ants to become a warrior. he will be paralyzed and hallucinate for days. his cousin is at the river, cutting giant water lilies. She has never worked a job, and never will. Faraway in Florida the man who worked the job of president of Brazil, who has never and will never do a warrior ceremony, fills his gut with factory farmed beef, thinks himself a man. No concern for the Sateré- Mawé when COVID found them, no concern when the chainsaws come. “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.” (APRIL 12, 1998). Well let him think that we are exterminated, so when he sees my Indian sister in a pricey restaurant on the 30th floor he dies of fright, her earrings tsentsak, psychic arrows that pierce his throat make him choke for he has seen a ghost. I hear he's a winner Cash Prize Poetry Contest, Joe Maverick, 6/1/23