Trials and Tribulations of Dirty Shame, Oklahoma: And Other Prose Poems

By Sy Hoahwah

Trials and Tribulations of Dirty Shame, Oklahoma beautifully showcases Comanche gothic literature, a new genre in Indigenous literature, at its creative best. In the tradition of The Iliad and Paradise Lost, this book is an epic poem of heroic and biblical proportions. Three Indigenous young people discover that the Holy Grail has been on the North American continent for centuries, and in Oklahoma for the last two. Battling both human and supernatural enemies, Velroy, Mia, and Stoney struggle to get the Holy Grail out of Indian Country to save their families and community and bring true peace back to their ordinary, Dirty Shame lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9780826365965

Sy Hoahwah

Sy Hoahwah is the author of several other poetry books and chapbooks, including Ancestral Demon of a Grieving Bride and Velroy and the Madischie Mafia (both from UNM Press).

Book preview

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF DIRTY SHAME, OKLAHOMA

The Moon, mother of all raids,

asked me,

Why did you leave Dirty Shame, Oklahoma?

I answered,

It’s a small dusty southwestern Oklahoma town

with one traffic light

a grocery store

and a high school burnt down

decades ago

But a few weeks ago

I was sitting in my bedroom working on my hobby of baseball cards

It’s not a hobby but more of a hustle

I buy packs of cards

and carefully open each pack with a craft knife,

taking out the good ones,

and reseal the rest

using a clothes iron

The adjustable heat is perfect

I return the packs to the store to get my money back

I accidentally cut my finger this time

It was a deep, stinging cut

I bled all over my desk

Blood got onto the baseball cards,

some even got into my little clay bowl that I put my loose change in

That little bit of blood started smoldering

The coins in the bowl started sizzling,

popping out of the bowl like popcorn,

flying across the room like hot shrapnel,

going through the sheetrock walls and ceiling,

leaving their burnt marks

My whole bedroom smelt of burnt copper

The bowl filled up with smokey blood

That’s when I knocked the bowl off my desk

It landed near the doorway sitting right-side up, unbroken

The blood inside jumped out all over the floor

The bowl filled right back up with more blood

I did not know what to do … what to think

I sat there on my bed, scared to move,

staring at the bloody clay bowl there on the floor

I picked up the little bowl and went into the bathroom

I poured the blood out into the shower

the bowl filled up with blood again

I poured the blood out again

It filled up with blood again

I poured it out again, and it filled back up with blood

On and on this went

At that point

I just let it fill up and let it sit there on the back of the toilet

while I was trying to rationalize this situation

The hustler side of me began thinking, jokingly, Well I can sell this for plasma.

I tried to use my cell phone to call

The battery couldn’t keep a charge

My laptop kept dying

The electricity throughout my house was pulled on

because of the bowl, and blood was pulling on it

I had to use candles

Next morning

the blood in the clay bowl congealed, smelling like rotting flesh

I opened the windows and used up several cans of Lysol

I was afraid of pouring out the blood

By late afternoon

flies were attracted to the bloody rim,

thick,

like a black salt ring on a margarita of blood

Then clumps of locusts started crawling out of the blood,

flying all over the bathroom

I shut the door and shooed them out the bathroom window

There were so many that they ripped through the window screen

My bathroom looked