Nunataq

In a strait, some things are useful.

Others, true, she turns to ash. 

Thrust, thus—

her head thick with arrogance, 

infection and futility.

It could be how a young wife went,

strewn with net-veined willow 

and mountain aven— 

trespass, and wreckage. 

She could write about the year 

she turned to heat and haze, 

to laze: immurmurat-, 

imauraaqtuŋa. Of cannula

and silver nitrate. Of petiolus 

and achene, about to begin again. 

Of greens as they green. Of a man 

aged, eskered. Of a confined gleam— 

to hereby dissolve and hold for naught

the soil / gravel / silt groaning 

as the tools of our penultimate glacier,

 

a glacier I might pronounce like grief. 

One does wish for words to thaw 

in the mouth, but find instead a tongue,

welt. Erosional or depositional, raised 

& visible, rift into language & grit—