by Emily Nilsen
the animals droop on hooks. Silt-free rivers
tint beaver fur blue and there, stretched
on a hoop, the pelt: round, glaucous,
tight as life. At eighty, Harold prods
at his past, close enough to touch
its underbelly fur,
with a fear so fresh
it walks without ribs.
Mouth of a River in Greenland
My nephew takes a break
from beachcombing to place
a frilled oyster shell over his ear.
Hears the groan of an iceberg, sighs
of narwhal tusks twisting as they grow.
Under a mile of ice, a hidden canyon winds
740 km to the Arctic Ocean. At three and a half
my nephew’s bones are beginning to sigh too.
We move driftwood and the imprints fill
with water. In thirty years he will be thirty-three
and a half and the mouth of a river in Greenland
will have its tongue pulled out, pinned to the news.
A smashed geode, hush-hush words spat out to sea.
NASA research shows there is still a lot left to discover.
Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounders
penetrate layers of ice and measure bedrock
below. Landscape-level X-rays uncover a new
Grand Canyon to ride our donkeys down.
Today my nephew likes dinosaurs, superheroes,
pink runners and visits to the aquarium
where we peer up at a plastic narwhal
as it sways from a row
of fluorescent lights.
Meanwhile, I Wait for You in Arrivals
Coated in the dust of post-winter
country roads. Sad snow piles, seeping grit,
leafless trees splattered in paper cups, hillsides
hide ground with a beige grass comb-over.
Since you left, the snow has melted salt stains
onto my trouser hem. On the airport TV
an Albertan rancher is crying about flooded land,
where to put his cows. This town is full of women
with popped-out veins. Muscular as elk, they could
squash me between their thighs. They eat
grass, have babies, drink kombucha, have more
babies, and the creeks keep rising. I wait
with a styrofoam cup of Husky tea
between my knees. Last week I met a man
named Malcolm who builds stone circles
in the forest. He told me how thirty winters ago
a freak storm blew snow over his plastic windows
in the Arctic. For weeks everything was dark,
and they had to eat leather. You disembark.
Passengers herd forward. We have learned
to live like the river we live on: in one direction,
with preprogrammed dams opening
then shutting their concrete gills. Water
obeys, our lives are in order.
In the Cornfield with a Horse
It is dark, you lie in a clearing.
The horse is beside you, to be safe.
Last night you climbed into the bathtub
wearing long johns, listening to the rabbit
in the moon. Run, it said. Hiding
was not an option. Your body
had become a machete, sharpened
on stone, turning on you. Life
is mean. The orangutan’s hands
were cut off when she ran too slow, or
not soon enough, a child once
on her back, now she lies
under a kilo
of ant-eaten leaves.
Meanwhile
My grandfather fiddles with his IV
and I count one hundred and sixteen
saline droplets. His body so happily
estuarine, no longer landlocked.
In Vancouver, creeks once ran
their brackish mouths, seagulls
dropped clams, the thwacking
city streets blockaded by fireworks.
The celebratory do not know
how to meet our eyes. I admire
the doctor’s Converse, unapologetically
upbeat on the mint floor. She describes
a clear plastic phone from the ’80s,
multicoloured wires visible — no
she is referring to my grandfather, who
once said, even if the pretty yellow flowers
along the highway are considered noxious,
never stop appreciating the vista, cynicism
won’t lead to happiness. Empathize
with viruses, like most of us, they fight
to survive. With my right foot I nudged
the porpoise off the shore to which it kept
returning. Despite trying, I cannot tolerate
inane inventions (sleeping bags
for cats, star-shaped ice trays, slippers
with flashlight toes). Invent a vacuum
to suction Piscine reovirus
from the Pacific and Atlantic.
The doctor removes
her stethoscope to ask
What virus? What sea?
Fog
Return to the Coast
Hello squinting thrash of sea,
you wriggling baby. I would hold you
if you’d let me. Hello kidney bender,
bulging disc and misplaced memory,
there you are. Choppy slate, dirty tooth
grind crossing. Old lumpy, you’ve churned up
the humpbacks. One and two,
three and four pluming herring,
deep sigh —
Deep six
the years, the already dead, my dog
bitten calf, and heck, our dying lung.
The sink is full of dishes
no one wants to clean.
Hello shipwreck leaking diesel,
eight life vests bobbing. I am down
with the ship, a captain
so parched my muscles fused
to bone. My sea, hello.
I ran from you.
I rain for you.
And What of the Fog?
Before a storm, its stench
was as though a wet mammoth
had shaken itself at the door.
And What of the Fog?
Pan-pan, pan-pan. An elderly man in a rowboat
has been lost for twelve days. Seas 1 to 2 metres building
to 2 to 3 late this afternoon. Creaking rowlocks
curdle your dreams. Fog implies visibility less than half a mile.
His cotton ball eyes. His temporary cataracts.
And What of the Fog?
For nine days we were tangled
in it, during which time we lost
the use of the letter O.
And What of the Fog?
If pushed in by a southeast wind,
it will carry the smell of flowers.
Birds-of-paradise in December,
winter rose in July.
And What of the Fog?
Be kind. It only wants
to be held.
Burdwood Islands, Ten Years Later
Mostly the same.
Though I can hardly remember
what it felt like to sleep on the beach
beside you. We had both forgotten
our toothbrushes and that night it rained
the scent of wild mint. To get to the island
we took turns rowing, facing each other,
legs in legs, one backward, the other
forward. Revisiting the beach now,
I crunch over crushed clams, dried urchins,
a jerry can ditched in the bush, and want
to know exactly when and why
the cedars dropped their branches.
The tree we camped under is no longer
a tree. It is gaunt. Sun-beaten yellow,
soon to be twisted
like the others
that jut out from rockshore. I am writing
to retrieve that forgotten part of us,
the part we left behind.
Every rock I overturn
is rimmed in dried-up
rings of brine.
Directions to the Burdwoods Fish Farm*
Rogers, Scott. Personal Communication.
From the Midsummer Island fish farm, cross Spring Pass
towards Retreat Passage and leave Green Rock on your port side,
before heading to the entrance of Retreat Pass and the waters
between Bonwick Island and Gilford Island. Head north
into Retreat between Success Point and Seabreeze Island.
You will see Gwa-yas-dums and their big house.
As you pass the Fox Group on your port, the Upper Retreat fish farm
will be starboard. Head into Cramer Pass and go east towards
Echo Bay. Once past Evan Point on Baker, veer north past Echo Bay
then continue north mid-channel towards the Burdwoods, keeping
Pym Rocks on your port and Powell Point on your starboard.
Head towards the western edge past Village Point on Denham Island.
The Burdwoods fish farm is anchored
to the island, located in the protection
of this bay.
*Where text = Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw Traditional Territory
Otolith
The pressure to return was mutual.
Chum to river, river to chum. It seemed
watertight, even if a tad unruly. By spring freshet,
the salmon’s egg had grown fins, fed glacial runoff
through its scales, and from the river, an imprint
stored behind its brain. Every year a new ring.
In labs under microscopes, scalpels splice fish skulls,
tweezers pluck out hyaline buttons, lasers sniff out
geography, chemical combustion, mini-museums
of aquatic travel: an island inside a lake on an island
in the ocean, our solar system, diagram
of the universe, a ripple, parallel
occurrences, sound waves, withered
eye of an elephant, dendrochronology,
a volcano’s perfectly mapped topography.
The otolith core is wrapped in opaque sheets,
time and space deposited
by nutrients. Yet, upon magnification,
the lines are not defined. Shhhh,
shhh, shhh — hemlock needles drop
in soft trillions, the chum,
their final nitrogen push.
Meanwhile, the Anchorage
They come in yachts
to buy bags of iceberg lettuce
from the marina. Squish-squash
down the dock in honeymoon
deck shoes. I row out, fetch
the crab trap, bailing the rowboat
with my rubber boot. Boss. Prosperity.
Ocean Dollar. Damsel. Darling. This evening
we share a patch of undulating sea. We piss in it
then warm ourselves with dinner as dusk
closes in. Glorious. The dabbling rain,
cashmere cardigans. A tooth-marked cob
of corn bobs past my oar, then a handful
of embers barely aglow, washed out
by the unseasonal tide. Anchors adrift.
Daddy-O. Fat Chance. Farewell, I pull away —
delaminated raincoat stuck
like unborn skin to my back.
And What of the Fog?
It wants us to stay.
Notes and Acknowledgements
Italics from “A Geologist Conducts an Aerial Survey of the British Columbia Coastline, 1995” have been lifted from the trailer for the 2005 documentary Ancient Sea Gardens. The italics from “Fragile Night of the Hitchhiker from Up Island” are from the Grateful Dead song “Casey Jones.”
“Casey Jones” Words by Robert Hunter. Music by Jerry Garcia. Copyright © 1970 ICE NINE PUBLISHING CO., INC. Copyright Renewed. All Rights Administered by UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
Earlier versions of several poems have appeared in PRISM international and Lake.
Thank you to my parents, Wendy and Carl Nilsen, for their unwavering support and for passing on the gene that enjoys long stretches of alone time. To my aunt Angela, for showing me how to make art a priority. To Pegge Marshall, for always asking for more words. To Liz, Meg, Finn, Esme, Emilia and Leif, for being blood and bringing love.
Thank you to Scott Rogers, whose friendship and knowledge of the Broughton Archipelago I have come to rely on. To Yvonne and Al, for inviting me to pick raspberries and stretch my sea legs when cabin fever set in. To Billy, for feeding me plates of deep-fried fish and for using the word “kidney bender” in reference to the rough boat ride we were about to take. To Nikki, for offering up a cabin when quiet was needed. Thank you to the Salmon Coast Field Station, for always agreeing to shelter me in a place where my bones feel aligned. The field station is located in Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis territory, thank you to the surrounding forests that carry this light.
Thank you to Trudi Smith, for hauling me into the backcountry with tent-shaped camera obscuras and offering bottomless inspiration. To Eileen Delehanty Pearkes, for always appearing at the right time. To Sheryda Warrener, for bridging past and present lives. To Sonnet L’Abbé, for conversations and reading recommendations that sparked a number of poems. To Melanie Siebert, for knowing what matters.
I gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan for the Graduate Research Award and Graduate Fellowship Prize. Thank you also to Nancy Holmes, for generosity, wisdom and willingness to converse with multiple mountain passes in the way. To Sharon Thesen, Michael V. Smith and Matt Rader, for providing input and advice. Thank you to the Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre.
Thank you to Karen Solie, for leaning into the poems with your editorial intuition and general brilliance.
Thank you to Kari Michel, for your curiosity and love of the unknown, it keeps us skipping.
To everyone at Goose Lane Editions and icehouse poetry, thank you for guiding me along.
photo: Kari Medig
Emily Nilsen was born and raised in Vancouver. She has published poems in PRISM international, Lake, and the Goose, and in a chapbook entitled Place, No Manual. Nilsen was a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2015, after having been longlisted for the prize on three separate occasions. Her work has also been longlisted for the UK National Poetry Prize. She lives in Nelson, British Columbia.
