The Reservation

The reservation is the larger setting that the speaker crafts with characters and context, creating an emotional and cultural backdrop for the entire collection. The reservation represents community, cultural continuity, and fierce loyalty. It also shows scenes of hardship and deprivation, both in terms of physical resources and in terms of external oppression. Even poems that take place in other locations entirely are suffused with the atmosphere set up by the earliest poems on the reservation.

The Parents’ House

The parents’ house is not just their house anymore — the brother lives there as well, and as the very first poem establishes, his addiction has transformed the home into one of chaos and pain. The speaker compares the parents' home to a zoo, raising questions about who has power over whom and how the brother's addiction has changed the home she once knew.

The Speaker’s Bed

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