Each of my shoulders carries a bird-sized version of a grandmother. One sits plump and merry, coins and sweets filling her pockets. The other is bony, and reeks from her colostomy. The merry dove pushes me forward, with encouraging little clucks. The sharp-beaked hawk claws me back, shrieking sarmata (shame).
(also known as Maryte Kanceveciute) is a poet, nonfiction writer, and native-rights lawyer who grew up in Chicago but has long lived in the foothills of Alaska’s Chugach Mountains. Her essays and creative nonfiction have been published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Judicature, the Graywolf Press anthology From the Island’s Edge, and Tribal College Journal, as well as in various newspapers.
Kancewick’s poetry has been published in Canada’s Saturday Night magazine, Waves, Cirque Journal, Northward Journal, Permafrost, Cabin, Fjord, and several other journals (and a calendar!); as well as in the anthologies North of Eden: An Anthology of Alaskan Writings; Top of the World: poetryALASKAwomen; and Flights of Fancy. One of her poems has twice been set to music: first as a choral work performed by the Temple University chorus, and second as an aria performed as part of Philadelphia’s Lyric Fest.
