Poems and Hollers from a Candy Apple Indian

By Dana Lowery Ramseur

If you were to meet me for the first time you would walk away with the confirmation that I am an extrovert. I am animated with my hands, love the feeling of words flowing out of my mouth, and my mind races to grasp the next clever line as we speak. If you truly knew me, you would realize that if I am talking a lot, I'm overcompensating for how shy I may be feeling. I realized recently I am a closeted introvert. I crave the company of others but have a tipping point of exhaustion too. I have always felt most like myself with pen and paper. This book is a collection of poems and poetry that I unearthed from my youth and some I added after reading my past voices. By revealing them to you I once again put myself in a thrilling yet compromising position. I am also a glutton for punishment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098368227

Book preview

cover.jpg

Copyright © 2021 Dana Lowery Ramseur. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN (Print): 978-1-09836-821-0

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-09836-822-7

Contents

Introduction

Apples and Indians

My Father’s Poem

Whose the Elder?

What I like

Little Boys will be Big Men

Tri-Racial-Rage

My Mother’s Tears

Dark Tranquility

Who am I?

I am

Please pardon the mess

Memory Loss

Eagle in the Sky

Recipe: Collard Sandwiches and Kisses

Mama’s Hands

Breaking Up

Ancestral Ruins

Orchids

You

Your Ancestral Indian Queen

Not better, just different.

Down on the Lumbee River

Quilted Stories by Our Grandmothers

Walking near the River

Am I a Feminist…did you mean Indigenous?

Walking into a Room

When I go Home

Headstrong Child

The bird and the bees

TWO SPIRIT TATE

I told you so…

My Manifest

Period.

I am Mr. Roger’s Neighbor

INDENGINERD #music

Headstrong Lumbee Girl

Lumbee Joke for the Ladies in the House:

Childhood Minutes

GRANDPA’S ACRES

Mirror

Zeb and Barnie

Smart Class, Dumb Me

Learning to Love Flowers Again

INDENGINERD #fantasy

Strong-Lowery

Growing up

Recipe: Chow Chow Tears

In my brother’s words: Lumbee Women

In my brother’s words: Home

Shoeshine Kid

Dolan’s Words to an Anthropology Class

Evan’s Acceptance to his Passion

The journey to Alwayston

Blame

Ill as a snake

My hair

Directions Home

I don’t pray

South of the Border

No one is listening anymore.

Hushed whispers from an endangered house party on the Lumbee River

Let me

Love me Like my Demons do

See/She my world

VIETNAM: 2,398

Rain Queen

Faith, hope and love

Shooter

Bone57%Marrow

What flowers will forget:

August

An Almost Aunt

No longer Daddy’s Girl

XIII

I spy with my younger eye:

Arrows in the Earth

Dark Magic

Lessons from Math Class

Ian and Chris

Looking

Listen to silence/Sound of Silence:

Alone with So Many

Eight Elements

A purpose.

Thanksgiving with Natives

What we survived.

We and the Snowbaby

deafening silence:

Between and behind

Recipe: Chicken Bog

Beach haiku

Deep Inside

Ugly Bits

Recipe: Chicken N’ Dumplins and Being Dumped

Eras

Recipe: Snow Ice Cream

IT’S A TRAP

Recipe: Chicken and Pastry and Pain

Pinecone Patchwork

Maggie’s Quilt

Twelve Layer Chocolate Cake and Twelve Resolutions

RESOLUTIONS

What boys like, what men want.

The weight of lies

LIBRARIAN MINDED

Bless this Weather

My births mark

Save the (lum) Bees

Lumbee Warpaint

Colorism

Native Girl Problems:

Lumbrarian Witticism and other Bumper Sticker Ideas

REBEL

MY IMAGINED RHODA’S LETTERS

About Author

Dedication

To my two sons, you are all that matters.

To all of the people who have

received letters or poems from me,

you are welcome, or I am sorry.

Please know if I wrote to you,

you were symbolic in

the tapestry of my life.

Epigraph:

Every woman is a rebel.

― Oscar Wilde

Introduction

If you were to meet me for the first time, you would walk away with the confirmation that I am an extrovert. I am animated with my hands, love the feeling of words flowing out of my mouth, and my mind races to grasp the next clever line as we speak. If you truly knew me, you would realize that I’m overcompensating for how shy I may be feeling if I am talking a lot. I realized recently

I am a closeted introvert. I crave the company of others but have a tipping point of exhaustion too. I have always felt most like myself with pen and paper. This book is a collection of poems and poetry that I unearthed from my youth and some I added after reading my past voices. By revealing them to you, I once again put myself in a thrilling yet compromising position. I am also a glutton for punishment.

Apples and Indians

I never really liked apples; they always hurt my teeth, except for the ones with candy on them; those were different. I first heard the slang term when I was in elementary school visiting my cousin. There was a lot of paperwork for me to attend, and I was excited to go. I recall two things, the walls and floors were brown, like a silly putty brown, and the boys called me an Apple Indian.

They explained I talked funny, like a white girl, so I was like an apple, red on the outside but white on the inside. I never felt white; in fact, I dreamed of having hair like a white girl, the kind that is feathered and held together by Aqua-Net hairspray. I never felt white, and in fact, I feared that if someone passed me by and touched my hair, they would know that I was different, not black, but not white. The boys picked and picked on me all day long, and before the school day ended, I found a pen and wrote on the bottom of my canvas shoes, screw you…it was my first act of defiance, and the first curse word I ever threw. On the

bus ride home, I casually put my foot across my leg

so all those boys could see the words.

I never really liked apples,

except for the ones with candy on them;

I am a Candy Apple Indian.

My Father’s Poem

As a small boy I dreamed of living in a land

other than the