2011 Wisconsin Senior Poet Laureate
Prairie Flower

Prairie Flower, 76, guest Senior Poet Laureate from Wisconsin, is this contest's co-founder and current administrator, aka Wanda Sue Parrott. The poem was entered from Wisconsin in order to fill that state's empty 2011 slot. She was named honorary chief of the White Buffalo Tribe in 1968 and is co- founder of the annual White Buffalo Native American Poet Laureate Poetry Contest. She publishes under 18 pen names. She believes writers are like actors, changing roles; poetry should be fun; poets should be bold. Prairie Flower is an Aquarian.

TA-BAC’S REVENGE

When
Paleface
first found how
native ta-bac—
smoked in red clay pipe—
would draw Great Spirit down,
he sat in sacred sweat lodge,
entered light, met the ancestors.
Brotherhood died when white man stole leaf,
cured, rolled, sold it. Tobacco smoke now kills.