They used to call me Pocahontas
Hair in pigtails squatting
On the Mother Earth. My paleface
Skin sun-warmed to brown
A black-haired woman
In a blue-eyed world
My smoky focus soiled
Their flaxen world
They used to call me Pocahontas
Hiding pain with laughter
I’d laugh with them. Finding solace
In connections with the past
My martyred Russian body
Running hot with foreign prayers,
I am not their Pocahontas
But it doesn’t really matter…
We’ve both had our Holocausts