“Homeland” and “Death, if you were a Lover”

Homeland

 I went to summer camp on old Keyauwee ground.
We called returners Weekaya, as if we had been on a long journey away
Though I could have driven it back and forth
Sixteen times a day.
     And I would
           Just to feel like I was home
                   Even though it was a home
                                    
                   I stole. 

Question: What is gold without the quest to find it? Answer: Sifting, praying, dirt. 
    Question: What is a homeland without violence? 

My house was built on a burial mound that didn’t exist until after my ancestors arrived.
My father says I’m part Cherokee—
Is that part of me
Still alive? 
I come from a town where tobacco smoke choked lungs until the factory moved
Where there’s always road work on the highway.
And I wonder
When it’s all gone 
(Because nothing ever stays)
    What will remain besides what never left?
The sun. 
	The oaks. 
		   The clay. 

Death, if you were a Lover

12 cups of free intimacy— 
where do I belong now that you aren’t here?
pick me up in the hallway
gently, off my feet like a bride
“get some rest—while you can—
you look so goddamn tired”
Death, if you were a lover.

my heart is likely drying; dying
water me with apologies and blood-tinted hues
let’s rest a moment in Pluto’s embrace; hold me a little while longer
under cobwebbed chandeliers, 
and tell me:
What would loving me look like, Death? 
If you were a lover.

an instinctual animal jolt,
unreachable, undisclosed,
 repeatedly, beating me
12 cups of free intimacy
I drink it up,
        lovingly,
your treacherous nature, chafing my reality—
losing yourself 
to it, me 
along with it, Death,
if you were a lover,

Would you force-feed me moonlit dreams?
Would you haunt my every scrap of solitude?
Would you love me, Death, and then leave me like filaments
in a lightbulb:
flickering
     glowing
            singing—
Death?

if you were my lover.