Ojibwa cinderella, she
tosses batches of hulled
rice into the air, wind disperses
the paper thin chaff, white girl laughs,

harvested rice mildews
if not quickly dried, Ojibwa
cinderella relieves herself with a
wooden pestle after the long days
of toil at rice camp, how good it is to
hear the first rice hit the apron,

white girl is a
corporate planter,
Ojibwa cinderella is on
her way to unlace white girl's
petticoat government,

bear paw snowshoes
she stains with raspberry
juice to leave her scarlet prints
upon the snow, Ojibwa cinderella's
going to rattle white girl's gourd, dance
and make merry, juice white girl's berry,

tribal politics keep
Ojibwa cinderella from
entering the ballroom where
white girl dances with CEO warriors,
the clock strikes midnight, OC is not about
to turn into a tight-ass, straight-laced petticoat,
she runs through the snow back to her lodge, her
left snowshoe drops off,

white girl is bored
with the ego waltz, needs
to kindle her womanly fire, knows
what she needs to do, find the noble
Ojibwa princess whom the snowshoe
belongs to, she follows the scarlet trail,

Ojibwa cinderella's foot
fits inside the snowshoe, critics
scoff at a far-fetched fairytale, the
author's own ambitious narrative of
lesbian confederacy motivated by her
own sensibilities, bringing into the rice camp
an accurate image of undertakings, of journeys,
of winterings...


Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist, brainchild of Sage Sweetwater Creative Properties
http://home.earthlink.net/~sagesweetwater/ flagship of Stone Creek Woman