The Bullet Cycle:

XII — Red Lake

Are you beautiful and terrifying…bursting and empty…smooth

bloody as the water of Red Lake, bloody as the history of the nations and their children, bloody as Jeff’s raging despair

Are you beautiful and empty…devastating as the fallen bodies

the Dakota defenseless against the Ojibwe, the Ojibwe resolute against the colonizers, then defenseless against the pistols and the shotgun

Alicia Thurlene Chanelle Chase Dewayne Derrick Neva Michelle Dash

Is your grief terrifying and bursting and can you feel it in

three days

You have three days before it flies away but returns to visit every year inside your walls where you have no escape, now bloody

like the Dakota defenseless against the Ojibwe now defenseless against the pistols and the shotgun