PostCard to Columbus Sherman Alexie

Postcards to Columbus

Sherman Alexie

Postcard to Columbus is a poem written by Sherman Alexie that portrays an array of different emotions. However the emotion that strikes me the most in this poem is anger. Alexie’s narrator seems to be personal angry but also angry on the behalf of the entire Native American population the poem starts out with the lines

Beginning at the front door of the White House,

travel west for 500 years, pass through small towns

and house fires, ignore hitchhikers and stranded motorists,

until you find yourself back at the beginning of this journey,

this history and country folded over itself like a Mobius strip

With this first stanza Alexie is basically saying “ it all starts here”; the reason for the postcard, the emotion it invokes, the beginning of its journey. The reason for this poem all starts at the heart of the united states a building idolized by the American society and symbolizes so much for both American and Native Americans alike. ALexie then makes a reference to manifest destiny and the westward expansion that changed the lives of Native Americans. The journey continues through the negative aspects of american society and it continues to repeat itself like a Mobius strip.A Mobius strip is a  mathematical term for a strip with only one side and one dimension. This signifying the never ending cycle of negativity in America.

Christopher Columbus where have you been? Lost between

Laramie and San Francisco

or in the reservation HUD house, building a better mousetrap?

Seymour saw you shooting free throws behind the Tribal School

in a thunderstorm. Didn't you know lightning strikes the earth

800 times a second?

This next line is directed at christopher columbus and the example he set  and the ideas he believed in. Christopher Columbus’ presence on the land started a domino effect and he is no where to be found to see the results. The Narrator is asking Christopher Columbus if he is in or has seen these negative places helped create for the Native American population. Reservation HUD housing is the Department of Housing and Urban Development project set up by LB Johnson to create homes for impoverished. catching these American Indians who seem to attracted to a sort of cheese to the forced secluded housing. The rest of the poem demonstrates how Christopher Columbus, and the legacy he left behind, can act without consequences. And he does see understand or even care about what he has done to the native american population.

Beneath the

burden of 15,000 years my tribe celebrated this country's

200th birthday by refusing to speak English and we will

honor the 500th anniversary of you invasion, Columbus,

by driving blindfolded cross-country

naming the first tree we destroy AMERICA. We'll make the

first guardrail we crash through our national symbol. Our

flag with be a white sheet stained with blood and piss.

Columbus, can you hear me

over white noise of your television set?

Can you hear ghosts of drums approaching?

At the end of the poem in the last two stanzas the narrator alludes to Christopher columbus’ 500th anniversary of his invasion when he conquered and invaded their territory. The narrator brings up the fact the Christopher columbus was blind during his expedition in the sense that he has no idea where he was going and just blindly traveled across the land. So therefore in his honor they will also blindly travel across America.