Vivian Faith Prescott


Souvenirs for the Discriminating Climate Tourist

1.     a pocket full of permafrost
2.     branch of yellow cedar
3.     drip of meltwater
4.     a landslide
5.     unidentified disease, causing weight loss in ringed seals
6.     ptarmigan feather
7.     winter rainfall
8.     arête ridge
9.     pink-footed goose egg
10.  two million years

Patterns in Spring Stikine River Kings

I go looking for signs, for the divine warnings
falling from stars.

If I could read those mystic salmon scales,

those cycloid bands, I could untangle this world,
rush into rooms

with folded forewarnings, be a screen flashing light.

But the ocean pulses beneath
my scars,

my ancestors’ scent still lingers in my hair.

Disaster is an unseen distant moon.
The fishermen

are swallowing boat coffee,

and I exist somewhere, interwoven
in future nets,

unaware of the wildswarms beneath the surface,

and the mornings sun’s diamond light
diffusing through fog.

Chemistry

We have absorbed this longing,
our mouths feed on our safekeeping.

We are corrosive, we’ve unlearned winter
and have asked for sand and a burning sky.

Are these our new life histories now?
They say our shells have softened,

our growth rate has decreased.
Mostly there is no data for this,

we have shifted the solubility of
what catches us in our dreams

and this is a terrible thing. We already
know our strong risk indicators—

upwelling, icemelt,
river runoff. I have no answers.

Nearshore, our timescales give way,
our skin splits, a rush of our caged selves

dissolves ear bones, scatters everything.

Vivian Faith Prescott was born and raised on the island of Kaachx̱ana.áakʼw, Wrangell, Alaska, in the Alexander Archipelago. She lives and writes as a climate witness in Lingít Aaní on the land of the Shtax’heen Kwáan at Mickey’s Fishcamp near Keishangita.aan, Red Alder Head Village. She’s a member of the Pacific Sámi Searvi and a founding member of Community Roots, the first LGBTQIA group on the island. She’s the author of three poetry collections, five chapbooks, a book of linked short stories, and a foodoir. Along with her daughter, Vivian Mork Yéilk’, she co-hosts the award-winning Planet Alaska Facebook page and Planet Alaska column appearing in the Juneau Empire.

ISSN 2472-338X
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