They are folded in like sleepers
among the grey blankets of my brain.
Their names are on prayer cards
on my sparse altar with images
of saints I never prayed to,
and I can only count back
to my great grandparents.
I know only that my last name
Has traced a line of men
from Europe to North America
to the north then the south
of the continent.
I left my home, the low land
where water always threatens
to disinter the dead
if they are not buried beneath concrete.
I’ve come to the prairied west
only to find my own backyard
has a resident girl interred beneath
dirt where a stone once rested.
How many others, unknown,
are scattered across the places
we feel so familiar with and yet
we’re too new to know
the names of families that came before
and the nations that were and are
here in this region of Niskíthe
which means salt water.
America is a cemetery
where the living are outnumbered
by the dead, but the dead have
no voice, no voice
to speak their names.