I was only just introduced to Inupiat poet DG Nanouk Okpik’s poetry today, and I want to check out more of it now!

If Oil is Drilled in Bristol Bay

By DG Nanouk Okpik

Why is it, in Bristol Bay, a sea cormorant

hovers, sings a two-fold song with a hinged cover

for a mouth, teeth set in sockets, with a hissing grind

of spikelets biting the air? Dip one.

The lips of vanished flames in lava coals

glow vermillion as an egg cracks. Dip two.

She/I feel/s a chimera leaving the eider duck. Dip three.

While still in the embryo, separating the body

from death she/I smell/s of arsenic, the Chugach Range

in unnatural bitterness. Why is it, man’s/woman’s nerve scarcely

stifled and sane, comes to prey? While they swoon

minerals of crude oil and sea spiders for tricking a way for gold.

Will they crawl around her/me, sink their eyeteeth in the sea,

ravaging the ecosphere and the ore gold for fuel. Drill.