Corpse Whale

Drying Magma Near Illiamna

28 Drying Magma Near Illiamna We lying in the onyx rain by garnet-cloaking icebergs. We watch on jet spires polar bears hunting snowdrift urchin of Inuit then edged puffin on bluffs with nests filled with ruby eggs of egrets. In moss picking gooseberries, wearing wrinkled skins of ivory and lichen where boar tides swirl haywire Inupiat they said, the men in black cloaks will mutilate our known selves shocked with eel swim as their teeth grind. Our bull walrus amulets snort and turn placid as our screams of lightning pass. Our slanted eyes lurk and twitch blood gales. We clad the night with dead polar bears stuck on ice. Bears and seas abide in a salt prison. Trails of sea cows reach the mountains 29 with meltwater draining off the peaks. As we cast solar rays to cliffs our seal oil lamps flicker and our igloos glow. In night we rest by brooks of amphipods spawning net stories feed on bloated intestines of full robins with bellies of globed eggs. We live in earth mounds along the Norton Sound which mutate into slat board quiver into the sea Alyeska liquefied by heat dissolves into mud. Flats where steam rises to ashes lava rock float in ten thousand smoke rings smoke rings of fire opal panning phantoms of cod children. Samna’s craters of solar dust collect sonic whale songs. Throat murmurs of old weathered ladies wearing moose hides, flowered scarves walking rocking in a billowed gait like bold Bering mastodons galloping across Skeleton Butte as bone mares. Galloping Squawking silence permeates the white volcanoes where ancestors dance \ light candles in redux furs fins and black raven feathers. Golden eyes of Polaris with his seven adopted sisters pack ice melt. Musk oxen can’t guard nuclear grasslands from brown air thin water. 30 The sea salt burns blisters into sores while the whale ribs split fissure as Samna’s right hand remains clenched during the spring thaw. In five minutes a mosquito sucks juice from a Fulmar’s vein, then from kids’ forearms women shape cinder cones while tying willow-gray braided hair, aging the sisters twelve thousand years young. Serpentine women touch minerals of DNA to gather strength shark teeth necklaces lure cairn rock prayer from sulfur and demon flowers. ...