The war ended / depending on which war you mean: those we started, / before those, millennia ago and onward, / those which started me, which I lost and won— / these ever-blooming wounds."
-- Natalie Diaz ("Postcolonial Love Poem")

Importance: In the opening poem, Diaz refers to unnamed wars, and while the full meaning of these references is open to interpretation, undoubtedly she is speaking in part about the centuries of genocide perpetrated by European settlers that obliterated a large swathe of the Native American population in the U.S. Though these wars might as well have happened "millennia" ago, Diaz still feels the wounds in her present-day psyche due to transgenerational trauma.

My brothers have / a bullet. // They keep their bullet / on a leash shiny / as a whip of blood. // My brothers walk their bullet / with a limp—a clipped / hip bone."
-- Natalie Diaz ("Catching Copper")

Importance: In "Catching Copper," Diaz uses personification to depict a bullet as her brothers' pet, then as their...