SPRING THAW by dg nanouk okpik
A remnant conceals
things I can’t
change, a blue
glacial memory
reveals:
light’s sharp edges—
I lean.
As if my body—
subdued
by brittle, gutter, brim
ice. Finding a chickadee’s
feather on a snowflake,
while lost in slumberous,
smooth, blue, smoke.
I awaken to a chirping,
flock fly overhead.
Indeed grace.
Excerpted from Blood Snow (2022, Wave Books ) by dg nanouk okpik. Reprinted with permission from the author and publisher.
dg nanouk okpik’s debut poetry collection is Corpse Whale (2012, University of Arizona Press). Her latest collection is Blood Snow (2022, Wave Books). Her work is featured in the newly released Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions (2023, Fiction Collective 2).
The poet writes in clusters, letting the words spill out of her mind, without adhering to the constraints of spacing and punctuation.
Ultimately, she connects the dots in her prose. But if you ask dg nanouk okpik, she’ll tell you that she doesn’t own the words in her award-winning collections of poetry any more than she owns the traditions of her ancestors.
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