SLUMPING

TUKTOYAKTUK, NORTHWEST TERRITORIES

Shismaref Kivalina Tuktoyaktuk

outposts forcibly settled become unsettled

by forces anthropogenic and climatic

drive those stilts deeper
buildings keep sinking in heaving permafrost, or sliding into the Arctic Ocean

even pingos crumble
millennia in minutes

the people have long seen things come and go
the caribou, the reindeer, the oil boom, the ice road
but for now the fox fur market remains stable and the unburiable junk keeps piling up