Pioneers

My first sister was named for the ancestor
who hit a Paiute in the back of the head

with a log. My second sister named
for the ancestor who nursed her dead

sister’s baby on the trail. The baby who
fathered the eleventh prophet.

I was named for the woman
who met Butch Cassidy

and didn’t tell the sheriff for three days.
No one named for my grandfather’s grandmother,

a pioneer girl who married her stepfather
at sixteen. Who delivered twelve children.

Millie Tullis is an MFA poetry candidate at George Mason University. Most recently, her poems have been published in Pembroke Magazine and Ninth Letter. She reads for Phoebe as assistant poetry editor. She can be reached on twitter @millie_tullis.