Alcohol Woman

By Dr. Deidra Suwanee Dees

painful childhood of neglect,
abandonment, stealing
the last remnant of my Indianness,

alcohol woman breezed back to
the rez
twenty-two winters later

without warning, dropping by my trailer
gifting me with expensive
leather photo album, encircled
innocent baby
picture on cover,

alone,
body draped with liquor-laden time,
ingested by COVID-nineteen,
miserable attempt to play
the mother role she sold for libation,
nothing from me,
awkwardly shuffling out the door,

agony running through my
consciousness, like untamed horses
stamping out my existence,

collecting my senses,
reminding
myself time had gnawed off the edge,

figured out how to live without
a mother or a father,
desperately needed a mother back then,

irrelevant,
COVID reckoning, misery was paid
—alcohol woman is not needed now,

accomplishments…
amassing strength from childhood
of adversity and peril,

remembering how far I’ve come
on my own… garbage can swallows
cheap
leather photo album

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Dr. Deidra Suwanee Dees is Director/Tribal Archivist at Poarch Band of Creek Indians. She teaches Native American Studies at the University of South Alabama, initiated by the Tribe. She earned her doctorate at Harvard. She is the author of one chapbook, Vision Lines: Native American Decolonizing Literature. Heleswv heres, mvto.