Moon of the Red Blooming Lilies
By Linda-Raven Woods
Strawberry Moon brought no thaw to Santee country brought no thaw to the
heart of Wowinapa, still haunted by the memory of the frozen Moon When the
Deer Shed Their Horns still remembering the blood the screams the cries
of the innocent the hangings the bodies swinging stiff in a death wind the
stink of death like the stink of broken promises—“Let the Santees eat grass,”
Agent Gilbraith said—“Let them eat dung”—and Little Crow fought for what was
his fought for the mouths of the starving the withered the diseased bellies of the
Santees—Agent Gilbraith died with grass in his mouth, so they said—and now
white sundown bullets ring circles round Wowinapa’s head as he dresses
his dead father Little Crow in brand new moccasins preparing him for the
journey to The Land of Ghosts preparing him a place among the spirits throwing
an old coat over the aged body fleeing through the night of crackling
fire feeling the blood of fevered arms dripping a last trail to Devil’s Lake.
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Linda-Raven Woods is a 2019 Hackney Literary Award winner, a 2021 winner of the Andrew Glaze Poetry Prize, and recently placed as a semi-finalist in the Big Moose Prize Novel competition. She is an enrolled member of the Echota Cherokee tribe of Alabama and teaches at Alabama A&M University.