card shop

 

Lisa Marie Brimmer

 

I had guard / skills too but I never grew / my thick baby arms / only
thickened when I read / angelou / I thought about cages and cabinets
I remembered how they were carved / springs in the river’s shoreline 

a new and natural image / dirt stamped on ho-chunk land / a people
who kept returning and I wondered  / to where / we walked down
sauk street / to mr. wilson’s card shop / the front porch LLC / sauk
land / we opened topps packs / like asmr before asmr / we made trade 

on the Victorian sleepout / on red showroom carpet / sacred land
a company / the self-protection of with collectible childhoods / in
elementary gym class / wilson made short legs / run hills / on sauk 

glass cabinets / illumed Souix idols / pez dispenser oversees trade
visitor guide / I used to keep / an eye on Horace’s / plastic goggles
the eagles passing over the river /we would run up to touch water
towers / rush towards totems of colony rusted in disuse / we 

scrambled up the rain wet stones / yes there was pushing / asthma
attacks struggle / yes weeping / sweating / guilt / yes we wanted to
go home / pleading where can we go where can we go

 

 

 

 

Lisa Marie Brimmer is a poet, essayist and theatre artist born on Ho-Chunk land now living on Dakota and Anishinaabe-Ojibwe land in so-called Minneapolis, MN. They are published in The Public Art Review, Gasher, Open Rivers, and The Alliance of Adoption Studies and Culture Journals, Konch Magazine and multiple anthologies. @leesuhmaroon & LisaMarieBrimmer.com