Sherman Alexie was raised on the Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He was born with water in his brain and was not expected to live. Even when he did, doctors predicted he would suffer from severe mental defects. Despite frequent seizures, Alexie learned to read by the age of three and had read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath by age five. He began publishing at a young age and won a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry fellowship in 1992. That same year, I Would Steal Horses, the book from which the following poem was taken, was published. He is the author of seventeen books, including novels, poetry, short stories, and screenplays.

I Would Steal Horses

For Kari

for you, if there were any left,
give a dozen of the best
to your father, the auto mechanic
in the small town where you were born

and where he will die sometime by dark.
I am afraid of his hands, which have
rebuilt more of the small parts
of this world than I ever will.

I would sign treaties for you, take
every promise as the last lie, the last
point after which we both refuse the exact.

I would wrap us both in old blankets
hold every disease tight against our skin.