Tricia Elliott

Ground  Does it bother you, the grinding? Teeth marks left on bones. The tideline’s broken shells. The ground, subducting. We could call it entropy, a shame, a disaster.We could focus on fault lines and fear — there’s plenty to go…

Handler It was winter, and snowdrifts covered the frozen fens. Dogs, harnesses, gangline, sled. In a rush of steaming yips and howls  you pulled the hook, and  ran free.   The dogs quieted, tuglines taut. The sled creaked and hummed…

Termination Dust   You stared in silence  at the MRI, at the shadowy cavitation of a patient’s brain.  It was progressing, this unknown process, at breathtaking speed. Your team had tossed every life raft, every throw rope overboard, and watched…

Affirmation   When the sockeye come in, choking the riffles with their crimson bodies, flashing their fins with effort  and instinct, we push through the alder and into the river to sit among their fading stories like patient, glacial erratics.…

Pingo Look with me, it said, across this ice-patterned ground, past the frost boils, the polygons, the scouredshield rock. Relax. Let the wind lift this top casing, this skin of sphagnum and sedge. It scatters easilyamong the waving cottongrass, beneath…