precarious when my view south 
looks back at me & as for place
(say it) a part of me looks down
& in trying to avoid visibility

I am the sea
I am the sun
I am the wind blowing in the world sky
I am the blue eyes 
I am your blue eyes

You slouch in the large chair, legs crossed. 
Nobody watches—unconcerned with posture
or other irrelevant conventions. 
Preparing to write is that exquisite 
and terrible state where even to breathe
too loudly could distract from the truth
just forming in the electric corner of the brain. 

Girl holds what is not baby anymore. Her keening echoes. She dips her finger in clay dust. Places it against the cave wall where she sleeps. One more mark, rusty-red, to show pain. The love of something not fully realized, just dawning.

the waves are waves
they come and go
through infinity’s
song of ebb and flow.

In the dream, I was walking.
I didn’t know where I was:
Woodland, dim like a stage set.
I saw two lady centaurs.
Both wore park ranger uniforms
On their human parts,
Complete with badges and hats.
“Pardon me,” I said to one.
Her nametag said “Phyllis.”
I said, “I’m a bit lost.
Can you tell me how to get back?”

Freudenschreck, or “intense pleasure-fright“ – leave it to the Germans 
To coin a word for the fleeting sense of being seized
By such an inexplicable joy it verges on terror. 
Or maybe it’s inexplicable terror pretending to be joy. 
Also, a physical phenomenon: neurologists say the amygdala 
Glows red as a jack ball whether subjects gaze at images of planetesimals or gallows.

David should have been happy. He had done everything he could to get into this school. The day he was accepted, he had felt as if he had passed through the eye of a needle, had entered paradise, had been rescued from the life of an office employee that was the lot of his brothers, his sister, and his neighbors in Bradford. During the two years he had worked at the hospital, he had dreamt of his future existence and developed a serene patience, knowing that his deliverance would come and awaken him from what felt like a century of sleep. Now he was finally free, but that anticipated, desired happiness that should have been within his grasp escaped him. For the first time, he no longer felt joy in painting. He felt strangely detached from his work, without energy or enthusiasm. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe he was just an impostor. His American friend listened to the young twenty-two-year-old, completely at a loss, pour out his anxieties. They also talked about other things, politics, literature, friendship, love, the vegetarian diet that David, like his parents, practiced. His daily conversations with Ron at least allowed him to feel less alone.

I am the delicate ventriloquist
the mammy museum is closed 
to unworthy memorials
of diseased constitutions

Nothing bad can happen: the history of births, weddings, and deaths is gone.
No fire to burst the kitchen cistern and drown the flames. I live here now,

witness to the slow collapse of columns and floors, the rain that floods
Queen Anne eaves and streams in sheets across the walls. I listen 

As the sweat
& tremors subside 
we wish to 
escape to the roars 
of our soaring billon
strong, our souls

Underfeet by Sami poet Niillas Holmberg is a poetic manifesto that underscores the vital connection with land as a central issue for those concerned about the future. This collection honors traditional knowledge while questioning its relevance in the modern world and mindset.