by Vivian Faith Prescott
Fáskka—Snow blown by the wind into an embankment.
In the time of stories, they were our food
and our words were rimmed with knowing ice.
Now we suck words from our own marrow,
discover fragments of our own bones.
I would rather believe these stories
are our gifts—a woman’s hand holding
a worn stone, a brass frog hung
on a string, the pale moon’s candle glow.
Let stories hum from your fingertips,
lick them and they’ll burn with ice.
Tell stories, like the moon hanging over the sea
across wind-shivered waves. Huddle with them
in cabins and recall them wild like that,
praying to bear skulls cradled in the trees.
Vivian Faith Prescott is a fifth generation Alaskan of Sámi heritage living on the small island of Wrangell, Alaska at her fishcamp. Her poetry has appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Poecology, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Traveling with the Underground People is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in July 2017.
A-Minor 