Summary

The poem begins by declaring that there are no angels on the reservation. Instead there are only animals like “bats,” “owls,” and “coyotes” (2-3), all of which the speaker associates with “death” (4). She theorizes that death probably explains the lack of angels (4-5).

Responding to an invisible interlocutor, the speaker says that she does not know who “Gabriel” (7) — the angel of revelation — is. Instead she is only acquainted with “a guy named Gabe” (7), another Native American she has encountered on the reservation whom she characterizes as a “jailbird” (10), stealing cars and having affairs with many women.

The speaker then reinforces the point that “no Indian” has “been” (12) an angel; neither have they “seen” (12) any angel on their reservation. The closest she has come to witnessing an angel is only in the theatrical setting of a “Christmas pageant” (13), in which the white “Pastor John’s...