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CHAPTER 1
PART ONE BLUE CABIN
BLUE CABIN
The driftwood rack hangs barren,
the fish do not hang in long, low rows impossible to walk beneath without brushing orange flesh, translucent as cut glass and dripping amber oil. The blue cabin is quiet,
the swan wing broom and the sand still
on the linoleum floor.
Inside, flies bounce on the windows with no one to let them out.
Outdoors, the flies do not buzz close to the fish rack, their maggot hatchery,
though there is no wind to keep them away from fish,
there are no fish this year.
Aaka, I'm sorry I'm away at school, while you grow old, trapped in a small house fifty miles from camp,
in a town without fish racks, sitting beside Aapa in the kitchen eating last year's fish,
half-dried and boiled.
I should be home, watching you cut fish, ulu in hand at the cutting table,
stained with black blood and slippery.
I should be trying to cut fish heads off.
The ulu unmanageable in my inexperienced hand would slide back and forth as I tried to find the place
between the gills and body, to bear down upon the spine. It's hard to crack it,
and the bloodline bisected would gush over me,
as it did the one day we stood there, my mother,
her sister, you and I. You laughed,
we all laughed as the black blood
slid down my pink windbreaker.
With the ulu I traced the backbone:
horizontal jagged cuts yanked meat from bones. Ragged and mashed fillets,
laughter and stories from mother of mangled fillets while you laughed without stories as you found the place between the gills and the body.
As you broke the spine, the blood did not flow over you. As you unzipped from white bones the orange flesh, it landed heavily in your hand.
Aaka, I write the same thing, over and over.
ALL HER BREATH IS GONE
the gnats swarm around my hood pulled tight around my glasses,
the blueberries begin to droop on their branches, the rain drops cause leaves to cling to my fingers, the red leaves to my fingers, the red leaves in the white bucket, some berries taste sour to my tongue.
the gnats bite my upper lip,
but the water on my hands keeps them away from the blue veins and raw red knuckles. how quiet it is, how still, after the retired men drive by, hunting from their old blue trucks.
all her breath is gone from the curve of the bone white lichen antlers to the withered willow leaves,
but we all cling to the land and we say our prayers to the red salmon, scales breaking against the net,
please don't take the long drink
on top of that hill,
the gray hill there,
to the left of the park sign,
are rocks pressed down by some historic weight, now dissipated,
crushed together, like tiles,
herringbone patterned. I want to say that weight is still felt.
THE SOUL'S SILVER SIDE IS SPECKLED BLACK
scales hinged, fastened, indented into the soul's skin. a horizontal shadow greens its back.
the soul has pink serrated gills to filter air the soul sometimes deep at sea
searches — a sharp tail flick — zips hard —
muscles rip electric — gills timpani — silk heart surges — air bladder expands — then sky
whiplash-body arcs —
tail water ripples down —
gripped in teeth — body crushed between palette and sleek blue tongue — an insect — marooned by wind gust — exoskeleton cracked between the soul's small, even teeth.
the soul's eye does not blink
sees everything from the moment it hatches — shivers
into form
what is remembered from all these things
what in all that depth most beautiful
most sacred in your unfolding, sacred soul
when I bear this knife down upon your spine hear my prayers
for everyone I love, I love the best I can
I loved her, bear this message to her if you can.
AAKA,
hello, beloved, after the dark has shadowed you, you are still fragile,
fragile in your pajamas as the fall spreads its cold over the expanse of water and the crying crane V their way south.
I have flown south,
beloved, my memories of summer grow dark,
my crane breast grows fragile crying over waters,
tears fall.
I fall from flight in dreams, fall south,
the earth spinning, its waters blurring dark,
your fragile face always craning up at me before you disappear into that crane form, that graceful form falling,
your fragile image wavering south as the sky grows dark,
as the shadows grow across the water.
Across the water,
I see you dance your crane dance, lift your dark wings and let them fall,
rise and fall facing me, I am south and your cry so far, it reaches me so fragile.
The film over the waters, if fragile is beautiful, a filigree of lace over the waters,
ice etching its way south,
as delicate as the wavering crane falling into the dark,
the dark so fragile this fall, like a ripple on the water,
I crane my face away from the south to seek you.
THE GHOST OF THE BLIND BERRY PICKER
Hey, did you see the geese?
I saw you lying there,
they flew just overhead,
you seemed to stay so still.
The geese flew low, so close I feared their legs and lice.
So close their bellies brushed The air-caves of my eyes.
AQPIK
At the Mouth of the Eldorado and Flambeau Rivers
Lagoon rises black with seaweed and sallowly retracts, wind rises salt scented, the islanders scream on their rocks and rise on white wings. Nobody talks,
gazing salmonberries divine an end,
the orange berries musk the air.
Shrunken pumpkin patch, tongue-soft berries stick to bucket sides. Sky sits on the horizon and watches cloudberries fall into blue pails.
On the river-far hill, brown backs bend and rise.
Perhaps the blind ghost comes near,
the leaves grow brittle, reindeer thrash wildly towards water,
thunder and a terrific splash.
Raising looking glass, the far backs transform into birds, rise up on long wings,
long dances, long necks, long.
Feathered belly only bullet stops. The dark V flight.
Crane my father killed we kept the feet from,
totems of fright. We watched bird bodies knowing, smooth against bellies, long legs pressed.
Sand hills leap with some light leaping arms cannot grasp or feel.
She's flying somewhere,
her thin arms rise, lift and fall lift and fall into what sky?
One last view, her rock island,
she rises like breath exhaling,
exhaling, and never catch stop.
What skin touching skin in the first home of her love will she wake to? Her body will settle into his sleeping shoulder while gulls cry.
I'm so dizzy and then the waking ache,
somewhere a spider crawls, tapioca sack to a black-star back, long-hair legs play lichen marrow keys, forward and back.
It will take a long time to find her,
she will wander over tundra picking berries,
she will not notice me but she is all I see flowered ugilhaaq sky. Her fingers fumble,
the orange globe slips down to me.
* * *
Everything pushes forward but the sea who sighs, retouches what it left, and leaving leaves again. The sea belly slides pitted, pimpled, gored,
clatter-scrape rocks through shift and slip,
scoots through motors rust mangled, toss-entangled dump heap. The sea sweats arcane washer machines,
fat men leg-tripped, white barrel bodies, leg sticks straight,
mosquitoes' net breaks.
Calder mobile coffee spit.
* * *
Swim Across
My aaka watches from the cabin window my cousin's brown body plunge into the cold. A singing starts. The host of jellyfish,
veined pink, quaver, they will not sting. Our driftwood sticks swirl their translucent tremblings.
I know Aaka will take us in dripping,
staring, gray-cloud eyes.
She wets thread in her mouth. The light comes through the window, almond fingernails and baby-powder scent,
the worn quilt and stained sheet.
She smiles distantly and moves small-body grace. Beside her, Julie's red candles rest unburned, Aaka stokes the woodstove.
The tablecloth is rolled in the corner. Worn towels hang stiffly above the stove. We will rub the water from our hair and icy drops from our faces. Sand will crumble from our feet, sand will settle into linoleum cracks, Aaka will sweep most out the door.
The far bank recedes into muddy grasses. I step into the water,
minnows shadow dart from out the rocks, the small boat grates against the shore, the yellow-rope reflection sways,
cousin calls my name, his seal-head bobs,
the water reaches my calf, I turn to look at the cabin window, and she's gone.
* * *
Holy Mother, if I begin to pray —
bow-spray seas salmon-shine, the silent tern sails on,
plankton swarm, broom-sweep baleen,
the slick slick slick paddle.
Barnacles cling molar beautiful,
the white stars sweep blue-whale skin,
Our Lady of the Bering Sea.
Aaka's Catholic radio station drones sleepily in the sun, her brown fingers stitch coarse seal skin.
BREAK THE DISHES OVER HER BARROW
Into the old woman's house the cup,
mug, flatware, doodad boxes stacked.
Two lanky sisters I saw with their mother at the thrift store lounged
on two old loose-jointed for-sale chairs in front of pots straining full of ladles wooden chipped metal stirring spoons straining spoons, whisks, meat forks.
Lank hair swept from their faces, the smaller shifted slightly, the older straightened up.
We got out and smiled. We walked behind them to the table of look-past-them mugs,
the girls' owl necks turned their heads behind their backs to watch us clank through ceramic bowls — "There's more in the house," they said. "Oh, is there?"
we replied as we eased past soup pots —
enamel black-and-white spot stainless aluminum rusted. Inside, their mother smiled in stacks of purses. Old,
old purses, cracked plastic leather one-shoed mismatched tennis and aged dress-leather shoes. A small round table,
formicaed (like our first kitchen table)
and covered in yellow bowls, red bowls, mismatched rooster bowls, Chinese letter bowls,
blue Danish and Pyrex bowls, stacked high and precarious. I wanted the yellow bowls
like Aaka's yellow Pyrex mixing bowls, Mom wanted soup pots for planting kale,
lettuce and Swiss chard, grown beneath plastic through three-month summer
and month-long fall. Behind the table an aluminum samovar, in the sink dirty dishes, on the rack dry. "Are these all for sale?"
I asked. She nodded, "Yep, we've got to sell all the stuff before we can move in. There's more in the bedroom."
It was so small. The bed looked so small.
Worn walls, window light dusty, the green army blanket seemed to sum it up. I didn't have the heart to catalog it all. I stacked
the bowls I garnered, the cooking pot set still in plastic.
I asked the mother, "How much for all this?"
"Make an offer." I looked at Mom, "Twenty-five?"
The woman said, "Sure."
We didn't ask about the old woman. Whether she moved,
whether she died. We drove home and washed the weevils out of dishes, washed the dust.
What bone broke or what emptiness —
the firewood box, the cupboard, the ash tray in the sink —
what lapse lifted her from the house,
shook out her memory of things and place,
unlinked property and set her down — her hand still reaching for the stirring spoon, her feet still sliding into her slippers, her fingers still tracing the outside rim of the blue bowl —
CHAPTER 2
PART TWO HAGIOGRAPHY
SIXTH SAINT
You have been meditating in silence a long time, Aapa.
Fingers knotted over the centerline scar running up your breastbone riveted on each side by red-knot scars.
I read your memoir.
What you must think of — so long sitting here —
the BIA did not send another teacher to your island,
wrested your school-aged children away as you stood to get on the boat in Nome. Ugiuvak — home
without your eldest children —
the movies you made to try to convince them to send another
teacher to King Island, to bring your children home.
We watched those movies together in Nome,
your children and grandchildren a white sheet hung up in the hall movie projector whirring as you narrated a home the youngest of us do not know.
The film spotted and marred with seawater from fierce winter storms.
How we all watched, how we all sat pressed together and listened. How you smiled and laughed.
Now nearly deaf, you read lips only if they speak Inupiaq.
There is so much I want to ask you with my nalua?miut tongue.
You took a picture of yourself over sixty years ago —
how young and strong you stood. Shoulders back, leaning against your harpoon. Standing on the ice,
the crush of the free ice slammed against the shore ice — a pressure ridge —
behind you. Wearing a fur parka with its white winter-hunting canvas cover. Your Siberian seal hook in hand, rope circling your arm and shoulder.
You taught Uncle Harry how to braid rope like that. I watched him sit at the work table,
his summer-tanned hands working the nylon into a seamless loop — for crab pots at the seafood plant.
Your ropes were pulled and dried tendons.
You wrote the last time you killed a seal with your harpoon two men hunting with you were later hit by a drunk driver and killed in Nome. I don't believe anyone could hit anyone accidentally in Nome.
But you didn't want to write about that.
As I watch, you stir, a beautiful light glows in your eyes. You smile,
your white eyebrows raise, you start to speak.
It was Christmas long, long ago, and the People gathered in the qagri — like the English word clubhouse, there was a men's qagri and a carving qagri and a communal qagri. Everybody got together then to celebrate Christmas. The priest and the schoolteachers were wrap-
ping presents for everyone in the schoolhouse. We ate agutaq and we danced late into the night.
Aapa, your belly rises with laughter as old times cast light through your form.
We didn't get much news back then. Before we got the radio in. We waited and heard news only once or twice a year. We didn't hear news all winter until we went by umiaq over to the other villages.
Then we'd hear who died and who was born, who got married. We'd get news from the outside world.
FIFTH SAINT, SIXTH & SEVENTH
Gabriel, sing great-grandpa's song,
head thrown back, black hair gleaming gray at your temples. So handsome, you,
great-uncle — my Ava — I imagine my Aapa looked like you when he was younger,
deep, dark skin and half-moon smile gleaming, you laugh the same laugh — huh huh huh huh!
Did your heart break, as his, leaving the island —
he stayed an extra winter, left his eldest children in Nome for school, lived on Ugiuvak — the place for winter —
with aaka and their smallest children —
Mom, age four, was there — and that 16mm camera recording the last winter of his traditional life.
Recording that last winter to convince the BIA to send another
teacher.
The film was ruined by the August storms.
They wouldn't have watched it anyway.
Those fuckers.
O God, reading Aapa's accounts ruptures
everything forever.
Aapa never sings.
But sing, Gabriel, sing, sing grandpa's song.
Mom and Aya Margaret will stand up to dance.
We welcome everyone to dance with us.
* * *
You all broke, I know, everyone shattered
Aaka and Aapa and their sad kitchen life,
eyes graying the straight, dusty streets
of Nome.
Everybody lost themselves in drink for years.
Some are still lost.
* * *
Sing, Gabriel, sing.
How beautiful our women are —
wearing floral ugilhaaqs,
dancing — that passionate precision —
your Frances, Aaka, Marie, Mom, Margaret, Caroline, Marilyn,
and your granddaughters — in a line — motions memorized.
And then, the song is over.
They move back to their seats.
Please, Ava, as we always do,
sing the song again, a second time,
and a second time they will stand up to dance.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Roughly For The North"
by .
Copyright © 2018 University of Alaska Press.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS.
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