Velroy and the Madischie Mafia
From the Comanche Tribal Housing of Madischie in southwestern Oklahoma comes a crew of young Comanche, Arapahoe, and Kiowa toughs hell-bent on gaining power within a subculture of organized crime. Led by a Comanche named Velroy, they find themselves caught in the century-long transformation from the old Comanche Nation to a modern-day casino-owning tribe. Hoahwah relays their story with a distinctive narrative flair, honed syntax, wild imagery, and a splash of lyricism.
Hoahwah’s Comanche county is a landscape haunted equally by death and beauty, and the ghosts that weave casually in and out of the arresting poems belong as much to the present as the past. Velroy and the Madischie Mafia embodies a tribal reality of meth labs, crow calls, and fancy dancing in which ‘boys neither go to heaven nor hell / but into ghost stories.’ The collection replaces popular clichés of historical destruction and vanishing culture with a sharp-edged portrayal of contemporary continuance in Indian country.…Hoahwah’s book echoes our own ‘hunger to answer’ old languages heard in the dark.
I’m always listening for the emergence of the next generation of young Native poet-prophets. One of them is right here.…Hoahwah’s finding the way to navigate the Comanche soul in these poems: by listening, taking it all down, and singing it back. Take a listen. He’ll capture you.
Sy Hoahwah is also the author of Ancestral Demon of a Grieving Bride: Poems and the chapbook Night Cradle. He is Yapaituka Comanche and Southern Arapaho.
Madischie Mafia
Comanche County
Colors of the Comanche Nation’s Flag
Snake
He Was a Rollin “20
The Other Creation Story of Superman
NDN Way
Cedar
Account of the Lost Valley Fight, 1873
Shakespeare
Jail
Family Tree, or Comanches and Cars Don’t Mix
Handwritten Notes in a Bible Thick as Buffalo Meat, May 4
Translated in English, Our Last Name Means:
Crow Child
White Clay
On County Road 51
Black Star
Beef Issue
Ouija Board Blues
Pure
After the Flood
Handwritten Notes in a Bible Thick as Buffalo Meat, June 30
Spotted Owl
Of Arranged Marriages and Comanche Wives
Comanche Band Haikus
Dismantled Horses
Ode to Loobey
Lair
Handwritten Notes in a Bible Thick as Buffalo Meat, July 4
Red River
Walking Home without Cigarettes
Battle of Dirty Shame, OK
Plum Bayou Combinations
Handwritten Notes in a Bible Thick as Buffalo Meat, August 13
Penathuka
Moment at the 2004 Miss Indian USA Pageant with Velroy: A Man Who Never Sees a Pretty Girl That He Doesn’t Love Her a Little
Anchor-Screws of Culture
Of the Owl’s Telling
Comancheria
Alight
