for-the-spirits-who-have-rounded-the-bend IIVAQSAAT

excerpt from poem by dg nanouk okpik from the book effigies

II. NATURAL WORLD ADOPTION

i learned to crack mussel shells, to collect moss on rocks,
save strewn caribou hides across malleable tundra,
how to stop my finger joints from cracking in frost,
to dye my hair garnet to fit in, to feel earthquakes
uprooting soapstone and jade, to count milliseconds
by watching a brook run, to count cracks in an ice flow,
to drink water from a horsetail reed. now my ball and
sockets rub and roll like hummocks bound and rivet
the northern tip of the rockies. i read books until my eyes
chart points in words down 4000 miles in desert sounds.
my tongue clipped to the brow antler,
the words rubbing sealskin to make thunder then lightning.
i guide the harpoon-line hanging in the singing house with
many blessed eggs for mothers, for children. i stitch you
around my eyes, down my chin, through my altered states
to remember it is you who guards me from long ice needles.
it is you threading the singe on my sealskin, patching letters
tied to ink blood. i am seeing only will-full DNA
tattooed to the snow knife for cutting ice blocks of chins,
perhaps for a house, a shelter, a lean to in a starved storm but,
had i not prayed for this moment, this dissension into fish
or birds, if what i wanted was to make it until the large stocks
of dried musk oxen are gone. then i choose sable day
and flux night.