No Alaska Native poetry highlight is complete without a poem (or three) from Inupiat poet Joan Naviyuk Kane. She has so many gorgeous, thoughtful poems and books out, and it’s impossible to select one (or even three.) So here’s one on the Poetry Foundation site that I have liked for awhile.

Compilation of all 30 Indigenous poems for National Poetry Month

Epithalamia

By Joan Naviyuk Kane

Butane, propane 

and lungful of diesel.

I did not stand a chance.

Always with poison

breath, bill, responsibility:

a man with rote hands.

Everything in exchange,

rain in a frozen season.

Our roof, roofs strung

 

with hot wire. Our love,

what was, an impression

of light, gaunt: there is

 

nothing to get.