Reservation Love Song

The title of Sherman Alexie’s poem, “Reservation Love Song,” reveals quite a bit about the speaker and the tone of the poem. The speaker has a sense of humor, since what follows deviates sharply from traditional love songs and poems. Much of the poem exemplifies a tongue-in-cheek, ironic tone. The speaker creates this tone by pairing the unromantic elements of reservation life with love. This seemingly odd pairing draws attention to the systemic conditions Indigenous people face. It also highlight traits like survival and endurance by showing that there remains the possibility of human connection despite disenfranchisement.

While the poem isn’t technically a love song, it is a short lyric that conveys personal feelings. The lyrical quality manifests in the intimacy between the speaker and the person addressed. The “you” in the poem is the person the speaker desires. The “love” is between the speaker and this “you.” Based on Alexie’s other work (Alexie's narrators are often males who employ sarcasm), it’s reasonable to conclude the speaker is male and the “you” is female, but Alexie doesn't assign any specific gender to either party. In Line 1, the speaker addresses their love interest directly. “I can meet you,” they say. They’re meeting place isn’t Paris, France, or some other predictable romantic destination—it’s Springdale, Washington. In Alexie’s short story “Indian Education” from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, an Indigenous boy named Randy comes from “the white town of Springdale.” In this same Springdale, the speaker promises to buy their love interest “beer” (Line 2). Of course, beer isn’t the most romantic kind of alcohol—it doesn’t typically symbolize romance the way wine or champagne does.

Nevertheless, after the speaker purchases their love interest the beer, they offer to take them home in their “one-eyed Ford” (Line 4). The beat-up car caps off the ironic tone of the first stanza. So far, this “love song” features a small town in Washington State, beer, and a dilapidated car. The speaker turns the love trope upside down. Here, love doesn’t link to expense and glitz but to disrepair and disenfranchisement.

In Stanza 2, the authoritative and ironic tone continues. As in Stanza 1, the speaker “can” (Line 5) do something for their love interest. The speaker, playing the role of the suitor, can provide things for their love interest. Yet, once again, these things deviate from average ideas about romance. “I can pay your rent / on HUD house,” declares the speaker (Lines 5-6). The generosity of this gesture is questionable. The house built by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) likely isn’t too nice or expensive. Indeed, Alexie lived in a HUD house growing up, and in his memoir, he describes it as “inexpertly constructed” (Alexie, Sherman. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me).

Aside from paying rent on their romantic interest’s home, the speaker can get them “free food from the BIA” (Line 7) and their “teeth fixed at IHS” (Line 8). This is ironic because the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) and IHS (Indian Health Services) can provide food and dental care to Indigenous people free of charge. Thus, the love interest could likely get the food and dental care without the speaker. Once again, the government agencies subvert the speaker’s largesse. The speaker is aware that their offerings don’t live up to love song expectations. The failure to meet the usual love song norms makes the speaker, their tone, and the poem funny, satirical, and ironic.

In Line 9, the speaker returns to a key theme of the poem: alcohol. In Line 10, the speaker promises not to drink all of the purchased alcohol. The speaker then turns to sex, announcing, “while you’re away I won’t fuck / any of your cousins” (Lines 11-12). The word “fuck” reinforces the un-romantic tone of the poem as the word is usually classified as vulgar slang. While it’s possible to argue that declaring faithfulness is romantic, how the speaker reveals their fidelity is more lewd than loving.

As with Stanza 3, Stanza 4 starts with drinking. If the speaker doesn’t “get too drunk” (Line 13), they can “bring old blankets / to sleep with in winter (Lines 14-15). Here the tone shifts. The irony dissipates, and sincerity arrives. It’s difficult to detect sarcasm in the speaker’s intention to bring up blankets that “smell like grandmother” (Line 16) so that they and their love interest can stay warm through the wintertime. The poem here becomes tender, and the earnest tone bolsters sentimentality. The offer here also underscores independence. Getting blankets is something the speaker can do for their love interest, and it doesn’t involve a government agency.

The mention of the grandmother appears to alter the speaker and their tone. In Line 17, the tone stays earnest with the earthy image of “hands digging up roots.” The speaker then reaffirms the quality of these blankets. Unlike the HUD house, the BIA food, and the IHS care, these blankets aren’t likely subpar or lackluster. The speaker says the blankets “have powerful magic” (Line 18) that will allow them to “sleep good” (Line 19) and “warm” (Line 20). While the first three stanzas satirize the love song genre and the adverse conditions of the reservation, the final two stanzas pivot to a heartfelt image of care. In the end, Alexie’s “Reservation Long Song” becomes a deeply felt love song.