Cara Chamberlain

Monarchs

—The Murder of Sitting Bull, Pine Ridge Reservation, 1890

Shots and the encore of shots

cut

morning from dawn,

season

from season,

when, still half asleep,

he opened the door.

They’d love him

in Paris and New York,

even the victory

over Custer,

the starving

of 1877,

his signature,

the smile

he’d given

with bread and coffee

and most of his pay

to the kids

begging

outside

the Wild West Show.

They cheered

every insult

he called them,

flustered translators

greeting his train

in St. Louis,

in Milan,

ridiculous

derbies

laughing and waving

at a captive beast.

They loved him

trading a joke

with Annie Oakley

when she combed

that brown hair,

washed

in the afternoon,

wavy and sparkling

as the grass

elk dream

in their late

summer sleep.

So well loved:

no one knew

and to this day

no one knows

where his bones

break.

Butterflies joined

when blood was given;

they drank its salt,

the routes of migration

they pass down.