“I watch how he shines

in his pinstripes,

a Bengal tiger stalking prey in the late summer night.”

So reads one of Rio Rancho poet Marianne Aweagon Broyles’ poem, “Indian in the Majors,” one of 40 poems in her just-published first book, “The Red Window” from West End Press.

Don’t look for simplicity in”The Red Window” or anything that rhymes or ends with “Nantucket.”

Taken out of context, it may be hard to decipher who’s in pinstripes: It’s New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain, who she proudly watched in a game on TV last season.

Part Native American and part realist, Broyles, 38, realizes she’ll never make a living as a poet, even if “The Red Window” sells a million copies. Eight-hundred copies of the 40-page book were printed, she said, and “They gave me 55 books – that’s my payment.”

That’s OK. She works full-time as a psychiatric nurse at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Albuquerque, where she finds fodder for some of her poems. “I’m very observant – my antennas are always out.”

At the VA Hospital, she said, it’s necessary “to make a connection” with servicemen and servicewomen, some suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other maladies associated with the horrors of war.

“It’s like a ministry, almost,” Broyles said.

Speaking of ministry, her father, a Tennessee native, had been a minister. Her mother, of Cherokee descent, was raised in Oklahoma and taught school. The couple lived in Los Angeles before moving across the country to Boston; Broyles was born in Massachusetts but spent a lot of time in Ocean Point, Me. “My parents had a fishing cabin on the ocean,” she said, happily recalling fishing trips and adventures on the Atlantic.

Growing up, she recalled, “I never wanted to be a ballerina or a nurse or a teacher. I wanted to be single with a stable of horses.”

Today, she is single but horseless.

The writing bug started at an early age, it seems.

“I used to play on my grandmother’s typewriter. I would write sentences, like ‘The cat is brown.’ I could read at 3 or 4.”

That she ultimately sought refuge in writing could be because a grandmother had been a free-lance magazine writer during the Depression, a grandfather had been the publisher of “Indian Voices,” a half-English, half-Cherokee publication of the past.

Living in Memphis for much of her life, Broyles obtained a scholarship to attend Emory University in Atlanta, and later obtained a master’s degree in creative writing and technical writing at the University of Memphis.

“I wanted to be more marketable,” she said.

Published for the first time at the age of 23, Broyles first “writing job” was at an ad agency in Memphis, where she worked in the historic Cotton Exchange Building but was at her cotton-picking worst.

“I was a proof-reader. I was the lowest person on the totem pole,” she said, and it didn’t take her too long to decide nursing might be a better career path.

Falling in love with New Mexico while on a vacation, she decided to move here and enrolled in the nursing school at Santa Fe Community College.

It didn’t take her long, however, to realize, “I don’t like blood and guts and stuff” but that nursing was “a good way to make a living.”

She moved to Rio Rancho a few years ago, buying a home in Cabezon after discovering it was affordable. “People are friendly,” she said and, who knows, maybe there’ll be a “City of Vision” poem in her next book.

Broyles laughs when she recalled what helped her get into psychiatric nursing. An interviewer asked why she was qualified and she replied, “My family’s crazy.”

It’s hard to tell if she’s serious.

“I think everybody on the planet is broken to a degree,” she said.

And a lot of that is evident in her book, where there are poems about homeless people and others in less-than-perfect surroundings. “It’s not a world of Pollyannas.”

Observation is key. Combine that with imagery, she says, and it becomes poetry in motion. Make that short poetry in motion.

“They’re not inspirational, not romantic,” she explained. “Someone teased me and said it’s definitely not Hallmark. … “They’re snapshots of everyday life.”

“The Red Window” is available at amazon.com, as well as at area Borders, Barnes & Noble stores and Collected Works in Santa Fe.