46. Polynya

After a year in the ice studying studyingice and puffin bear fox dreams of icewe left for the oldhome. Our ship lockedin in ice drifting. We hadradio wehad tv wehad books we hadjobs wedid. Wedrifted purposefully chose to live therewe bored in the crust the icewith drills with hardsteadydrills tofind the nests tofind the age during which we beganto know enough to dissolve the ice. There wasa plague awayfrom fromthe ice. Where it was toowarm and where the icewas was made to undo therewasa plague. Farfromthat werewe weredrifting. We drilled the ice we lookedfor traces gases salt ice salt. A hornet was found in some flour aflower and nurtured untildead from the cold and saved kneltto in a jar inamber. During the long nightwinter there were dances. In the longdaysummer we slept hardly at all and neverprayed. We looked for medicine in theice forlife in the ice. We were the onlylife wefound. Brash ice became pack ice. Ice floes you think youare the icefloes but the landedge is whatyou are.

#weeklypoemandpic ​

​1
don't
despair
dear wife

there is a
cow gentle
soft
tongued

dog on
our roof
snapping
at birds

about whom
the neighbor
called
my work

concerned
for our dog
but not
the birds

2
our basset isn't like
a toddler unaware
of his bad haircut.
he likes his bad haircut.
his middle name is wallow.
grace of a fish
but a catfish.
every three weeks or
so he writes a letter
to the editor.
there's rolling of the eyes.
his missives are always
the same: complaints
about the park district,
the state of the roads,
how loud kids
are nowadays, windfarms.
the usual outrage. when the
paper comes that day
he barks and barks.

3
I'm under the back steps
with my dog.

He spent the day there.
It's lonely like the

time I slept in a
field across from a

house. It
was cold and the

porch
light kept me half awake.

There are leaves and dirt
but mostly there's fur.

This is where we've gone to
dream and to twitch and

to bite one another's cheeks
and smooth one another's faces.

Oily nose to dusty nose. That's
how we were.

He's been drinking and drinking
and throwing up clear

so we keep the toilet lids down
and hope

for the best or the
worst. Not the in between.

He went under the culvert once.
There had

been a flood and he
was fetching sticks. He

went into a
drain and bobbed up on the

other
side like a cork.
He snatched frisbees

out of the
air like plates off a shelf.

Bury me
under the back porch
steps with my dog.

We can be
there together next to the

cool foundation of the house.

It's a place nobody looks. It's
a place everyone finds.

#weeklypoemandpic

40. medicinal

the pill that he
took showed him

how it felt to climb over
the green mountain

and swim the
brown river clothed

to cross a border of
fences and weeds.

anything to get here
where he was already.

he looked around winded
wondering about

the things he’d collected
and the wives he’d left

and was homesick for
for the village he’d been
​
trying to come home to
when he took the pill.
#weeklypoemandpic