dg nanouk okpik, Inupiak/ Inuit.
Split Bone
by dg okpik
A break in the blood vessel from split bone
like a porcupine quill pierces my ulcerated foot.
Decrepit I walk with wolverines
on the edge of the ice shelf. I neatly stitch
with two threads a cyst containing blood.
In the opposite poles of a cell a shallow alcove,
of the northern Pacific a right whale swims
in a rancid blue stew full of milk salmon
which feed brown bear. I transfuse quantum
in gradients of one minus energy, a closed universe,
foraging death in a another body, mixing with black
blood, I become a carrion beetle, bones outside.
A figure shaped like an inverted heart
stiffly mingling between body blue inuas spirits.*
*www.drunkenboat.com
dg nanouk okpik is Inupiaq, Inuit originally from Alaska's Artic Slope. Her family resides in Barrow, Alaska. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast College.
okpik is a recipient of a Truman Capote Fellowship. Her poetry has been published in Touchstone, Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry, Many Mountains Moving, Poet Lore, Washington Square, Red Ink, and Sentence.
Her first chapbook was included in Effigies: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from the Pacific Rim (Salt Publishing, 2009). Recently she her poetry has been anthologized in Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas, (University of Arizona Press, 2011). okpik's first full-length book Corpse Whale is forthcoming in October 2012 from the University of Arizona Press.*
*http://dgokpik.com
IX
Kin 214: White Rhythmic Wizard
I organize in order to enchant
Balancing receptivity
I seal the output of timelessness
With the rhythmic tone of equality
I am guided by my own power doubled.
Calm indifference refers to bearing the slings and arrows of fate, the criticism and hostility of others; having equanimity in the face of loss or gain.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2015-2016.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Svadhistana Chakra (Kali Plasma)
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