Red Dressing
Weatherworn dress shaped fabric
wind whipped floating the breeze
Echoes hung from tree limbs
Faded claret cotton polyester linen cardinals
Wingless beside a highway
Vacant necklines with empty sleeves waving
to passing cars with blank stares
Bosom hugged tight Hip snug Missing a body
An unkindness of ravens flying above
or a murder of crows black specked diving
The warm breath of a woman fills a dress
slipped over her head braids falling free
Warmer than brown eyes staring back
Flyers nailed with a native likeness
Asking Where are we Meme my wisdom
Murder my flock but don’t you dare see
The native cleaved from an indigenous child
thrown in a schoolyard grave too many bodies high
History shifting the dirt over red bodies
Once we were a commercial crying
over garbage thrown from cars at our feet
Listen the missing and murdered still speak
Howling our truth from the torn
Remnants of red dresses
When did I become a mile marker
striding the highway across nations
Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in Glass Poetry: Poets Resist, The Temz Review, Contrary, trampset, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Pioneertown Literary, Grain, The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry, Gothic Blue Book Volume VI – A Krampus Carol, The Rumpus, Smoke & Mold, Lit Quarterly, PØST, Massachusetts Review, and Savant-Garde.
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