Cell Block On Chena River

By Dg Nanouk Okpik

First: Brother, remove the tool marks on your scathed skin, brush your tattoos with
nettles, smear bearberry juice in the gashes. Crack open the jail-seed.

Second: Tear away the bars which restrain
your lean, spare life. Bend your curves in a knot. Brother, smudge your
saw-tooth edges.

Third: Cut red seaweed to conceal your gray cadaver;
start wetting your skin down; after scraping,
drip your bowels of blood, change into wolf.

Fourth: The savannah sparrow flies north.
In speech, smell fine-grained hawthorn.
Collapse your voice into bark and howl.

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