You’d think she really was
Mud sticking and stiffening to the Loud Lady’s toes,
And her sigh sticks in mine.
Don’t let them do this to me and I didn’t

But I did. God’s great pillar carried us west.
They dragged her like a fog.
The men who cried **** spit and grinned
and the smoke grew sorrowed with girth.

How I long to breathe in Black Hill breath
to drown in the Belle Fourche
and swallow the palest Crook ashes that float,
Chewing the body that I left and let-

But there is no redemption in the tops of towers.
No spiral of justice. No figment
of grace in these sooty species.
No Bear Lodge witches that the Loud Lady cried

So surely that
You’d think she really was