34°54’15’’ N 111°47’30’’ W
MICAELA MERRYMAN
34°54’15’’ N 111°47’30’’ W
red rock giants
holy in another life
gawked at in
hot pink jeeps
for $30 an hour.
\
25 ¢ to peer
into the eyes of the mountain \
through a
rusted looking glass. \
\
tourists stumble
over themselves to see their \ faces in the forefront
(and ours: \ the background).
5,000 men strong
we watched as our brothers
lost their footing to
10,000 white intruders.
they now call it
Soldier Pass.
after the
ensanguined hand
of General Crook.
MICAELA MERRYMAN is an African American and Choctaw poet. She is the inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of Flagstaff, the host of the Off The Rails poetry series, founder of Sonder Magazine, and Programming Specialist for the Northern Arizona Book Festival. Her poetry debuted in Poetry Magazine.
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On a random weekday trip to Sedona, I had the privilege of seeing Soldier Pass from a beautiful outlook with a view. As I paid 25 cents to the viewfinder and peeked out at the rocks, I saw a noisy tour guide and his even noisier tour group stumbling in the way of the view. I listened as the tour guide told the story of how "thankfully" the army were able to "push back the Natives" from Soldier Pass and that now it was a great hiking spot... It was the most distasteful thing I've ever heard. I came home and researched Soldier Pass, and wrote this poem almost immediately. How such bloody history has become such a popular attraction is still beyond me.