 While many other poems of this kind can come off preachy and offensive, Rose's poem delivers a message and conveys her obvious emotional stake in the matter while at the same time managing to not come off as overly-emotional sermonizing.In short, this poem is Rose's explanation of the hypocrisy of the “whiteshaman.”

In no other poem does Rose manage of fuse inner turmoil and violence to make beauty so expertly as she does in "I Expected My Skin and My Blood to Ripen".Interweaving war and peace, Rose brings the victims at wounded knee back to life again so we, the reader, and witness the items they owned being stripped from their bodies along with their flesh and their dignity.