Warming

She and I make a bladder bag to draw water from the ice trench.

She/I chain stitch/es a skin dressed in oil to make a new pot of soup.

She/I sew/s a badger hair rough around the top of her/my kamiks

to make the steps windward, toward the limits of woman.

She/I eat/s club root and white clover to strengthen her/my silver

body to bear a child. She/I map/s, following 1 degree from the North

Star and 60 degrees from the end of the earth’s axis on rotation

for Ukpeagvik she/I use/s a small arc of ice, cleaving into parts, reduced

to simple curves fitted with serrated edges of white flesh. She/I mold/s

to the fretted neck of frozen water into a deep urn, made like a rock shelter

or a cavern. She/I construct/s a hole on the surface of a glacier formed by melting particles

of roe and pan reservoir dust from a shelter for the ice worms. Because the earth is

molding, burning, laughing, and purging its crust.