Luta Fast Dog

Creation Story

A boy named Tunkasila
Made little men with pale, cold clay
To play with
But they began to fight with one another
They had green eyes
Greedy eyes
They killed each other one by one
Down into the dirt they fell
Like flies
Tunkasila cried until all the world was awash in mud
And the figures woke up
Suffocated and cold
And they were no longer pale and perfect
They were stained earthen red, coffee grounds and rusted copper
With lost eyes, brown eyes
Dead eyes
And so we were his old toys
Lying half-buried and forgotten in the backyard

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Drive

My brother drives too fast
He treats his car like a living being, like he can hear it breathing
I turn up the radio to drown out the roar of the engine
Because I think that’s what he’s hearing
And I wear my seat belt like a sash
From a beauty pageant
Because my brother drives too fast
But we haven’t crashed yet
It’s like he thinks he’s riding a newly tamed beast
Like the pedals are spurs in its sides
To urge it’s metallic mass forward
Running, sprinting
Too fast
He thinks the steering wheel is a set of leather reins
He grips the stick like he can feel a beating heart beneath his fist and we ease into 110
miles per hour
His eyes trace the darkening horizon like he can read a route to heaven
He thinks he can bend the roads to his will, white knuckle grip on the steering wheel
As we spiral over the sunbaked blacktop
Like he’s writing rhymes with his burnt rubber treads
Like he speaks the prose of a V8 engine
And I think my brother will leave one day
Riding the winding tar trail into a red sunset




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Luta Fast Dog is a high school senior attending Saint Francis Indian School on the Rosebud Sioux Tribe reservation in South Dakota. She enjoys reading, writing, and making art. She dreams of becoming an editor or published author and illustrator of children’s books.