Xiricahua
The prisoner of wars
Unbraids the ancestors
Unafraid of the imperial cage
She is free wherever she stands
She dreams us whenever she feels alone
She holds her left hand against her rib cage
Feels life defeat death
Feels freedom disentangle herself from the settler
She looks past us
she sees us
where she will be
when the prisons and the forced marches
are dust
And we rejoin her
Rebraiding horizons into her unbraided self
Prisoner of wars of liberation
Dream keeper of our struggle…
The poem-maker:
Isabelle Perico Enjady.
Chiricahuah Apache prisoner of war
Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
1886-1914.
