behind clumps of  
sagebrush, rains quills,
they eye the Cherokee writer
like a vulture, bordering her thousand
acres of registered ISBN's,

heroine to the readers,
foe of the witch hunt and
suspicions, charges of sorcery
in league with cornplanter, bankers
invite her quill holdings, mark her deposits
with lavender ink on her calender of pagan festivals,
Samhain make a transaction, she withdraws the spirit coin
buffalo nickel,

she'll keep firing
her quills while her
wife loads the weapons
and fires off a few rounds
of her own anvil, it's f***ing
3 AM! BOOM! Dominga Rio
of Cuero uses the cherry on the
tip of her Cuban cigar to light the
fuse of braided horsehair igniting the
gunpowder,

she strengthens her quill
by rubbing off the rust and
tarnish that it has come into
contact with her rivals, signs her
firebrand name on the Outlaw Treaty,
for they will remember it forever, she has
it in writing, two explosive issues, the writers
selling off their hunting grounds, betrayal that undermines
poetic influence, the growing resistance of the colonists to
proclamations that infringe on freedom, links corroding and
soon be broken, beside's the stink of bear grease...


Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist