Butane, propane and lungful of diesel. I did not stand a chance. Always with poison breath, bill, responsibility: a man with rote hands. Everything in exchange, rain in a frozen season. Our roof, roofs strung with hot wire. Our love, what was, an impression of light, gaunt: there is nothing to get.
Joan Naviyuk Kane was one of my mentors at IAIA. Her poetry and intellect are amazing. She taught me so much. We once had almost an hour conversation about commas. I am forever in debt to her and love her work. You can come back to it again and again and see something different. I would not be the poet I am today without her mentorship. She once said to us in a workshop, “Imagination is the greater activism.” I think about this all the time.
Joan Naviyuk Kane has authored seven books and chapbooks of poetry and prose, most recently Another Bright Departure (CutBank, 2019), along with The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife (NorthShore Press, 2009), Hyperboreal (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), The Straits (Center for the Study of Place, 2015), Milk Black Carbon (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), A Few Lines in the Manifest (Albion Books, 2018), and Sublingual (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Her artistic interests concern the role of lyric and story whose urgency and vitality is carried forward into the present and future by contemporary indigenous writers.
