by Alice Rose Crow~Maar’aq
Weaved through North
Arlington again
to reach a(nother)
long wait.
At a bank of inserted,
taxed, maintained
cross-lights on Benson
at Lois
—after a Loussac
library hold pickup and
early
evening Iñupiat oil inletside trail walk—
this gaze follows a
named next-next-next-next-hext generation.
A rubbernecking expat
bicycler in-training.
Above, on a signifying
chicken-type
wire-enclosed
footbridge with an accompanying mountain/wolf tooth pattern
—raising up then
pointing down—
a butt-ass naked
budding Brown woman gestures wildly as she hurries
across and back,
back and across.
A(nother) pacing
pacing
pacing
sentinel.
Traffic lights finally
try
change.
Too late to veer
east?
Swallow.
Follow
southeast.
Turn onto Lois then
signal
to maneuver across and
back. Check west and wait against a pulse of even more gawking passers.
Navigate to reach
Benson’s far north fourth/
third lane. Enter a
southern side lot
of a gentrifying spec
housing stock/customizing home constructor.
Park at the foot of
northern steps
where a burdened male
stands deciding what to do?
Emerge from a dusty,
pollen-strewn aging black Toyota sedan.
From the stairwell
base, he asks,
Do you have it
handled?
Raise myself toward a
fury of (yet) a(nother) ranting woman.
Ask that particular
questioning male,
Would you please mind waiting
to make sure I’m
ok?
Check both ears where
long, patiently heated and shaped swirls of copper exchanged during
a Friday evening stroll in Madison seven summers ago swing
swing
are swung.
Unlatch a front
door.
Take a
maybe-not-really-fading royal blue
—Cabela’s Made in
China Gore-Tex—
raincoat from a
driver’s seat and ready to begin this climb.
Just past a first
landing: a fallen scarecrow.
A tan cashmere-weight
—shiny
camel-lined—waistcoat,
a folded then knotted
bandana,
sweats, top,
undies,
a patterned pair
of
crew socks and canvas
sneakers,
an almost full thin
syringe beside a short stack of bright foil packets
neatly arrayed across
a southern side of an upper flight of northern cemented stairs.
Above, a woman’s voice
firmly announces,
I never wanted to get
married.
I never meant to!
Reach an
overpass.
She is striding
with remnants of a naked brown woman’s body flowing below a full head of
streaky chemically coppered hair.
She
—still she—
advances
as I offer a
hand-me-down tax-deducted raincoat.
Are you ok?
Raising her voice she
makes her claim:
I’m interrupting her broadcast.
A screed?
Can’t you see I’m
BROADCASTING?
Yes, slowly I nod.
Broadcasting.
Where you from?
Are you ok?
NO.
She wants
—I want—
people to look and
see
what this city does to
People.
She paces, gesturing
across a nakedness
that is her own brown
—patchy discolored and
scarred—
yet still strong
body.
Aarpallruuq:
Look! LOOK!
See? SEE?
They need to SEE WHAT
EVE LOOKS LIKE.
HEAR WHAT IS BEING
DONE in this place. What they are doing TO PEOPLE HERE.
I
AM EVE.
Look! LOOK!
See? SEE?
Still—quiet—slowly I
ask, where you from?
Offer the Bishop
Attic’d
double zipped ykk
raincoat.
Couldn’t there be
—isn't there—
a better way
to solve problems we
find here?
How is this
helping?
Sweeping my right arm
across more imported cars steady streaming east on Benny Benson below,
suggest,
people passing can’t
hear hollered words
but some will want to
try call pole-ees
because they do (not
want to) see you
naked like this.
GOOD!
Cops could come take
me to jail
to make them all see
Eve
even if I have to do
it
ONE
BY
ONE.
Cocks then fires a
pointer finger trigger.
ONE TWO THREE...
Asserts I’m
taken over by evil, letting it—them—inside me.
Asks, why did
you let them inside?
Get them out.
OUT!
I pinch a scarred brow
and slow shake
my head. No.
More quietly now—
no.
Where you from?
Offer the fading royal
blue raincoat.
I would want you to
try help
if you saw me naked
and
talking like
this
but I do see
I can’t really help
you
like this
right now.
As I start down those
hard steps,
she turns to face
me,
drops a knee,
apologizes for
forgetting her manners.
I look up to her.
SORRY.
Sorry.
I mistook you for
somebody else.
You’re probably
married
and in bed by 9
and
don’t know what
happens at night.
Girls, kids are sex
trafficked...
She tells me her
English language name.
I smile. Reply
with mine.
Out of respect for X
and Y Z she says
I will cover myself.
Good, I say. Thank you.
Quyana.
She steps down,
bending to reach for
an outspread coat. Slowly turns each sleeve inside out,
saying something about
needing to do it like that because of how it was offered...
a man looking so
sad...sad.
The now not-waiting
man calls out,
I’m leaving now.
Pausing at a landing,
I gesture toward plastic syringe and packets to say, please don’t put
that shit in you...
Continue down. Reach a
bottom and thank the back of a quickly-walking-away man.
Thank you, sir,
I attempt.
Circle round to drive
away past a looking-down man now climbing into a low Audi
with its gleaming
overlapping four-ringed symbol of progressive engineering.
At the southbound
stoplight on Lois,
I look east to see our
latest kinswoman pacing across and back—
raging with nipples
bared in a manner of Pauline Opangu.
This time she
is inside a sheen of an inside-out sandy coat shielding her scarred still
strong aging Brown body.
Aarpagtuq,
aarayuli.
Her words are in my
ears as she shimmers in an evening sun echo-screaming, How many more Epsteins?
Why so many Acostas?
She is—we are—waning
and yet still climb above enemies on all sides, all around.
© Alice Rose Crow~Maar’aq
Alice Rose Crow~Maar’aq, was born for and raised on the Kusquqvak in
southwest Alaska. She nests in Spenard, a southcentral Alaska westwardly
neighborhood near water and take offs and landings. Ali is a momma,
granny, lover, ilung, relative, and friend. She completed an
Institute of American *Indigenous Arts MFA in Creative Writing under the
guidance of Chip Livingston and Elissa Washuta. Her longer works remain underway. In
them she explores dynamics of holding steady and moving forward in these times
of rapid change and anomie. For whatever it might be worth, Ali is a member of
the Orutsararmuit Native Council and is an original ANCSA Calista and Bethel
Native Corporation shareholder.
