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.