I love my brother best in memories such as this one: I sat in the rattling bleachers of the Needles Mustangs gymnasium with my mother, my father, and all of my siblings, watching my brother run out to the warm-up song “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. It begins with an unhinged, chant-like yell, followed by the strike of the word thunder and then thunderstruck. The word thunder is growled fifteen times followed by nineteen war-cried versions of thunderstruck.

Dressed in Mustang-blue tear-away warm-up pants and shirts, my brother and his teammates—some of whom were from our reservation—were all glide and finesse. Their high tops barely touched the floor. They circled the court twice before crossing it and moving into a layup drill while “Thunderstruck” filled the gymnasium. They were all the things they could ever be—they were young kings and conquerors.

To that song, they made layup after layup, passed the ball like a planet between them, pulled it back and forth from the floor to their hands like Mars. “Thunderstruck” played so loudly that I couldn’t hear what my mother hollered to cheer my brother—I could only see her mouth opening and closing. I was ten years old and realized right there on those bleachers thundering like guns that this game had the power to quiet what seemed so loud in us—that it might have the power to set the fantastic beasts trampling our hearts loose. I saw it in my mother, in my brother, in those wild boys. We ran up and down the length of our lives, all of us, lit by the lights of the gym, toward freedom—we Mustangs. On those nights, we were forgiven for all we would ever do wrong.

Ode to the Beloved’s Hips

Bells are they—shaped on the 8th day, silvered

percussion in the morning—are the morning.

Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little

longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me—

I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock

right now—so to them I come—struck dumb,

chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna.

How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed

Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur.

My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena,

ecstatic devourer.

O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped

the amber—fast honey—from their openness,

Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulum—licked

smooth the sticky of her hip, heat-thrummed ossa

coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire

to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet-dripped

comb—hot hexagonal hole, dark diamond—

to its nectar-dervished queen. Maenad tongue—

come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips,

I am—strummed-song and succubus.

They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book—

the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel.

Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay ay ays,

Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray.

Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera.

Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle:

What do I see? Hips:

Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone.

Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread,

wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be: