The first thing I learned in school was shame.
by Marisa Carr


The first thing I learned in school was shame.
The rules of a game I can’t win –
in this skin?

Not the same.

Looking for truth and I found it wrapped up in White lies –
things long-disguised and hidden from my eyes.
In the meantime, somewhere nearby,
commodity stomachs sink while the stock market rises.

See, once upon a time America gave some money to my dad because
back in the day – Oops! – they stole our land.
Told him the money was to buy the American dream but they must have been joking 
because that money was gone in a case of beer and 2 dime bags of weed.

It was before I was born so I never even got to smoke it.

So this American Dream, I just have to question it –
When did they start to include FAS and meth in it?

I’m sick of watching slow, ugly living deaths from it
as a testament to the colonization of this continent.

And some days, it feels like the gunfire’s stopped
but the bombs keep going off again
and again
and again

and then I think about my childhood friend.

She got gang-raped while she was high and when she told me about it, she said
“Well sometimes shit just happens, you know?”

Do I know?
I think I do

but I’m sick of having such a daily view of the
symptoms of living within systems
that were intentionally designed
to perpetuate ongoing genocide.

Marisa Carr grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but is Turtle Mountain Ojibwe from the Turtle clan. She is a writer, performer, musician, artist, student, teacher and fool. She lives in Minneapolis.