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I don't know where
or when this is, so like
that night somewhere
in a church or hall on Elmwood,
that blacktop line separating
the Lower West Side from
Downtown, Allentown, the Chippewa
hot spots, and the tall, cramped
Elmwood houses people call a "village"
in an effort to find a home.
We gathered in that room, filling
its empty chairs with our survivor
bodies, warming ourselves
with cornsoup and frybread
and so much song, those
of us with silent voices
taking in the music
and memory like sunlight
and strawberry drink
on a winter day,
where Kris in Factory Outlet
Reeboks took up
a rattle and cleared
his throat with responsibility
as he always does
and Angie, even in
her "hot heels," stepped
out across the varnished wood
floor, skidding as often
as shuffling in those gleaming
patent leather stacked-heel shoes
during the women's dance
that defines our place
on this turtle's back
laughing with those
in moccasins and steel toe
ironwork boots, defining
themselves and us with their feet
pounding our repeating rhythms
of identity and history
so much like these men
and these women and these
elder women and these
elder men, and these
children, young girls and
young boys who will know
how to sing and dance and take
a horn rattle
and a drum and move
body and mind for all
each is worth, with
precision for seven generations
in either direction
and this continuance comes
in lacrosse jackets and
work shirts and formal
dresses and blouses
and T-shirts and jeans,
and earrings and pompadours
brilliant with Brylcream
as well as ribbon shirts and
beaded velvet collars and
garments cut from treaty cloth and
we know the clothes
don't make the man
and don't make the woman.
It is instead the place
in memory that awakens
when the benches appear
in the room's center and
rattles and drums materialize
in hands already intimate
with the shapes of their handles
and sticks and carved rounded bellies
and here we are, like them
awake and aware, the songs
of these silent photographs
filling our ears like a pulse
when we are straining
to keep ourselves going
singing and dancing
when we are not sure
we have one more dance
or one more song left
in these legs and lungs
but their dedication
gives us our dedication
because if they could do it
we can do it, and yes,
it's a Friday night
and yes, it's been a long week
but when you get in that room
with so much history and family
there will be nothing left to do
but smile and laugh and mingle breath
and taste the frybread, dunk it
in cornsoup and wash it down
with strawberry drink
and know that body and blood
is not solely the ritual
of one group
that we each share blood
and body on this floor
and that is how
an adjective becomes a noun
how Social is a way of being
and not a description
the ways we should behave.
Whether we sit or stand,
pressing ourselves together
in this small room
you know we will still be
around long after photos
of us have lost our names
and the details of our time.
Essence will vibrate
from your hand to mine
and from mine to another
and in that way, accounting
for variation in human
talents, we carry on.
No matter where the room
is located, we will find ourselves
and our own way
home.
Eric Gansworth (Onondaga), originally published in From the Western Door to the Lower West Side, a collaborative book of poems with photographs by Milton Rogovin (White Pine Press 2009).
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