Literature
A Partial List of What We Buried
A Partial List of What We Buried
by p.b. wells
we made America great
one grave at a time.
that is the part
they leave out
between the flags,
the hymns,
the brass bands,
and the cheap speeches
from men with clean hands
and dirty souls.
the Wampanoag were first,
or close enough,
they fed strangers
who later learned
how to steal land
with a Bible in one hand
and a musket in the other.
the Pequot burned
in their villages,
and we called the smoke
settlement.
the Powhatan knew rivers,
corn,
seasons,
the old language of earth.
we knew hunger,
greed,
and how to rename theft
destiny.
the Lenape watched their home
become someone else’s map.
the Haudenosaunee built councils
while we built excuses.
the Cherokee had newspapers,
courts,
farms,
a written language,
and still we marched them west
until the road itself
started coughing up the dead.
the Choctaw,
the Chickasaw,
the Muscogee,
the Seminole,
each carrying songs
older than our little
