Last Stand Hill
After Alice Notley
you must do battle with Eros: what else is stopping it / black horned female throwing herself / manifest / out of ash-grass / this scene of the ‘last stand’ is based on careful study / available evidence / we circled all around them swirling / across my steel hood in a tumble of hooves / like water around a stone / full sun / drag that gold winged god to burning prairie / they came on us like a thunderbolt / trails of antelope carcasses off the roadside / other soldiers are found / do battle / reflections skirting red dirt / on this knoll / approximately 41 men shoot their horses for breastworks / out west / make a stand / I picked up their pieces / buried infatuation’s warm body beside graves / on Last Stand Hill / so mixed up / mutable: marrow dust / you could hardly tell anything about it / trace the campaign on arms / outline the shape in stone / other soldiers are found within the enclosure / I never before nor since saw men so brave / last armed efforts / gold was discovered in the black hills / treated as hostiles by the military force / you did not forget it / wrens grow out of the tussock / I was there / here fell Custer / this is true / light down the back of crow country / beauty be thy name
About Sierra Jacob
Sierra Jacob is an MFA candidate at the University of Montana, where she received the Richard Hugo Memorial Scholarship for poetry. Her poetry has appeared and is forthcoming in LUMINA, Yemassee, Sonora Review, The Louisville Review, Cream City Review, Pacifica Literary Review, and others. She was born and raised in Ha`iku, Hawai`i.
