War Dances

Sherman Alexie's War Dances is a finalist for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. It's about time. The winner will be announced March 23rd.

Last year Alexie published a tremendous book of poetry entitled Face. One of those rare books, like many of Alexie's, that one should hold onto forever. Another was this 1992 book entitled...

I Would Steal Horses
For Kari

for you, if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father, the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born

and where he will die sometime by dark.
I am afraid of his hands, which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.

I would sign treaties for you, take
every promise as the last lie, the last
point after which we both refuse to exact.

I would wrap us both in old blankets
hold every disease tight against our skin.