Totem Poles

by Will Monigold

Watching a drunken man cry
Flopping jellylike in a heap
Along a bad street
That smells like piss.
“They can spend
A billion dollars
On the moon” he says
“But they can’t make
A safe place to walk.”
He’d cut his finger
On a broken bottle.
“He’s Kwakiutal,”
The other man says
Like that explained everything.
“They can’t hold their liquor.”
He laughs a toothless laugh.
We help the Kwakiutal man
Onto the sidewalk.
Prop him up against a dumpster.
“I’m Makah” the other man says
“We don’t have that problem.”
He laughs again
Showing all of his empty mouth.
“He carves totem poles”
The Makah man says.
“He’s famous
Everyone knows him.”