The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Last Glacier at the End of the World by Vivian Faith Prescott

How to Survive a Glacial Meltdown

Acquire animal skills.
Become a loon, a haunting crier,
swallowing the remains of this world underwater.

Learn to skin. Yourself.
Pull your feathered hood
over your head, adjust your chinstrap

to your throat.
Know where the sacred places are,
because there is no

safe place. Your homeland is melting
at .25 millimeters per year.
The ocean fills your boots,

there is too much salt in your food,
and the sandfleas are hopping
on the linoleum.

Lately, you find yourself curling
up into the dark, nesting near
the water’s edge, the place

where your dense bones
park your truck and watch
the ocean jump the harbor’s breakwater again.

What is it that has awakened in you?
Your tremolo wavers
and the frequent hard rains

now sound like deer hooves—a clack and cry harmonic.
You know what I mean by that—
you want to run and fly at the same time.

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This selection comes from The Last Glacier at the End of the World, available from Split Rock Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Vivian Faith Prescott was born and raised in Wrangell, a small island community is Southeastern Alaska. She lives in Wrangell at her family’s fishcamp—Mickey’s Fishcamp. She holds an MFA from the University of Alaska and a PhD in Cross Cultural Studies from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She’s a founding member of Community Roots, the first LGBTQ group on the island. Prescott is also a member of the Pacific Sámi Searvi, and writes frequently about Sámi diaspora and climate change in Alaska. She is a two-time recipient of a Rasmuson Fellowship (2015, 2019) and a recipient of the Alaska Literary Award (2017). Prescott is the author of four chapbooks, two full-length poetry books, and a short story collection. Her work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. Along with her daughter, Vivian Mork Yéilk’, she writes a column for the Juneau Empire called Planet Alaska. For more information, visit: vivianfaithprescott.com. Twitter: planet_alaska and poet_tweet. Nilsa Rivera Castro writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe and the Non-Fiction Editor of Doubleback Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Selkie Literary Magazine, and Writing Class Radio. She’s currently an MFA Nonfiction candidate at Vermont College of Fine Art and lives in Riverview, Florida.