FLORICANTO ISSUE Susan Deer Cloud   HE TOLD ME He, too, was Mohawk … going way back. I had stepped into his wife’s boutique in Ithaca, New York. Chinese, she sewed shawls that made me dream magical multi-colored birds and Joseph’s coat of many colors. We shared stories about the “way back.” His Mohawk ancestress married a 17th century Dutchman with sky eyes and a land grant she could give to her children. Many Indian women did that, he said, when they saw the land being stolen. I wondered about my first ancestress who spread her legs like broken wings for a white man.  Was it so centuries later I’d be here? Did she grow to like it? Now some pale eyes forget their history, would send back all “illegal immigrants.”  Their hate can’t see what’s funny in that. I try on a velvet shawl that trails like peacock feathers across my white skin. O to fly away from this loss.   Susan Deer Cloud is a Métis mountain Indian (mostly Mohawk/Blackfoot) from the Catskills.  She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and two New York State Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowships. Her most recent books are Braiding Starlight, Car Stealer and The Last Ceremony.  She is dedicated to getting out the voices of indigenous people through her editing work and by serving on the board of YANAN (You Are Not Alone) non-profit Native organization for stopping suicide among young Native people.   Her website: sites.google.com/site/susandeercloud/.   Published in Volume 13, Number 1, Winter 2012.