In the Event of Flooding
“In the Event of Flooding” is part of the collection Indigenizing What It Means to Be Human. Read the introduction to the collection here.
This time an ark won’t do
Only fish or fowl
Adapt
Sew wings
between shoulder blades
slit gills into necks
Try to gain perspective:
fill our lungs and see how long platitudes
can keep us
floating
Sharks
flock to the city
wolves learn to keep
their head above water
And girls have been turning bird
since the beginning.
Uyaquq ataku aturciquq. [1] [1] Later the neck will sing.
Yes, there will still be singing
when the tide has swollen its fill
of giving
ground.
Paniyaqa aturkutartuq. [2] [2] My daughter will sing soon.
Yes, there will be singing.
Abigail Chabitnoy is the author of In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful (forthcoming, Wesleyan 2022); How to Dress a Fish, shortlisted for the 2020 International Griffin Prize for Poetry and winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award; and the linocut illustrated chapbook Converging Lines of Light. She currently teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts low-residency MFA program and is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Chabitnoy is a member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak, Alaska. She has an MFA in poetry and a B.A. in English and anthropology.
