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Christine Allen-Yazzie Interrogation and Other Acts    of Love and Patriotism Upon questioning, man offers nothing. Torture, that language of love, sends fine rivulets of blood-sweat to steal through night and heat from dog bite to concrete floor; from prison wall to soldier’s boot; erotica gone awry—flesh, bone, a pyramid of suffering and shame, naked against a flood of U.S. patriotism. This torrent of bare bodies bend and sway under a sluice of young men and women drunk with conquest, heavy with fear, bold with entitlement. Behind that black hood swells all that is lost: child, parent, waiter, writer, mechanic, avenger— above all, humanity, hope. Still, apathy calms all storms in the land of the free— so little we care for love, so greatly we thirst for blood, for battle, for victory, for pain. As politicos pass and the sky resumes its tranquil gaze, only the slightest change in landscape will remain: trees will bow a little lower streams will flow a little slower a sigh will evoke a sigh will evoke a sigh will evoke a sigh   A Girl on a Road Somewhere in Idaho Unzip the self. Curl the fingers, scoop out the mess. Wipe it on the table, on jeans. That's how it went four or more nights a week, her emotions a threadbare quilt she carried everywhere—to classes, head weighted to the desk. To work: Did I forget your cream? So sorry. More butter pats? To the beer garden, where she dripped like sap into strangers’ ears, her eyes stained and flat like run-over quarters. I left her in a frosted field. The night I ditched her, she had traded her long johns and lucky sweater for a short, filmy dress spilling over with bright red and yellow flowers, but I could see through her. I drove until my eyes grew heavy. Anxious for a sign, I barreled down an icy gravel road until an owl burst in front of my car, clapping enormous feathered cymbals against my windshield. I pulled over despite the drifting snow. I didn't cry. I didn't say anything. She knew I would leave her eventually. She stepped out, shut the door. I backed up. She looked at me, shielded her eyes from the headlights. I turned around, left for town. From my rear-view mirror I could see her black X of a mouth, her pale, partly veiled legs. She is still there. With her live a hundred dead men, a thousand destinations. They crawl up her legs like runs in nylons. They search out the private folds of her breasts, her ears, her navel, her numerous lips. They sail on her long hair in the cold March wind. I drove back to check on her now and then. I'd find her deer-eyed, frost-bitten, wandering on the dark rough road. We'd stare at each other. I'd hold my breath, lock the car doors. I couldn't take it anymore, the coming and going, the days waiting, the heady cologne. The beer, the smiles, the Santana. Waking up disoriented, locked between desire and regret—the splitting between this self and that, machetes worn dull, blood run thin— I keep her secrets and mine, for the most part. I'm sure she understands. She must understand. Last night I saw her in a dream. She is beautiful. More so now than when we parted. Her blue knees tremble, her teeth chatter. Her icy hair has frozen into flags. That scarf of a dress sometimes snaps up and back with the wind. I miss the way she talked nonsense. I miss the way her eyebrows drew together, worms in love. I carried a picture of her for years. My husband became jealous, so I tore up the picture. She is so far away. She wants me to come for her, but I can't go back. I am intact. Alive, if numb. Out of school and forgetting where I'm going, I carry fear and violence in my purse, in the zipper compartment, in a red pen. I dot i's and cross t's. I can't wait to sleep every night. I am terrified to go to sleep every night, to face the life I have taken, the girl I left behind. I just want to slip away, split all new, throw myself into a vase and sprawl out everywhere, spill my scent all over the room. But I can't go back. I abandoned her for good. The girl was a drunk. She was reckless— out of control—and ready to let me go. ©2004 by Christine Allen-Yazzie Christine Allen-Yazzie has an MFA (fiction, 2003: three years of study, five years of obtaining signatures for thesis). Some of her work is published, some has won prizes, some festers. She owns an editing/writing business as formidable and obligatory as a reckless, couch-pissing dog you can't bear to return to the pound.

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