proud heron

tmkwaliknej teli-te’lsit weli-ankamkusit aqq me'kite'lsit

11/21/08 05:54 pm - kjikanji'j

living in this town a hundred years too late. when i should have been inside the yellow school, long floorboards and bright windows staring out over the snow marsh, i drew it instead. sitting in a plastic chair, in a squat brick building, agonizing for weeks over every shingle and slat.

my house is one of the oldest buildings in town. before there was a town. it was an inn for mailmen and their tired horses on the long postal road. if my father had been master of the inn, my mother baked bread in the scorched hearth, and i walked the cold hour to the yellow school! if if if

11/1/08 05:48 pm

ala' tett sitm sasqatek, tmkwaliknejk kaqamultipnik. enqapultipnik aqq ki'nujultipnik. ta'n tujiw enmikiaq, ketana'titl so'qomu'ji'jk lame'k samqwan na'ku'set epsatl. mu nemikik te'səgl nekmowey, msət maqtawultipnik aqq e'tmapukultipnik kalqwasiet

way out on the tidal flats, the herons stand still and proud. at low tide, they hunt for little fish in the sun-warmed pools. i have never seen so many before, all silhouetted black against the sunset

10/5/08 02:07 pm - qalibu

i can't relate to the british girls. even the way they shape their sentences is different. they grew up with the secret garden, nursery tradition. this is what their country is built on & what they hearken back to.

our stories are hand-cut houses, weather-grey hay barns. loving people who speak streams. no castles, we go on holiday to pine forest ghost towns, rust-red blueberry fields, ancient mountains. no lions in our zoos. white bears, brown seals, black geese.

stories of caribou. beings far superior to people. they walk up to you and bow, a sign that they honour you with their body. after you eat them, cover your body with them & sing for them, sink their bones in the lake

9/22/08 12:54 pm - toqwa'q

trees that hold up the world, that will tell you secrets if you listen to them, that have faces hidden in the folds of their bark

trees with silk leaves, whose branches make a domed temple to whisper under

tities is screaming outside my window. inside i am sick and shivering. there is not a cloud in the sky. ksu'skuk dapple the light on my room's blue walls. even in winter they will stand in the way of the low sun. they are hundreds of years old. steadfast. i like them

9/8/08 06:04 pm - nipi

this is pretty things, an inspiration book,
a board to tack up lovely scraps, a flower and leaf adventure, a delicacy plate, a sweet quiet side of my usual brash mind to unearth. scissor snips and imagined music and sunlight and snow and coy smiles and glass and words plucked from the nest fresh with pinpointed meaning

the photograph makes me look younger. earnest eager hopeful and bright. my whole life has been reinventions. none of them worked and i end dusty dropped back in my old self. i have no hair now and try hard to shock my rural public school. i have a twinge of regret and a longing maybe to return to long hair and grandmother sweaters. regression