is the Aleut word for Alaska, a passive voice
construction that would mean docked points,
were this a sentence in one of my freshmen essays
about a belief they hold or a problem they see
in the world around them. One problem is passive
voice, I say. Cultivate your own unique voice, I say.
One girl writes of her reign as a native beauty
pageant queen. Another, of the smell of whale
blubber frying in a city so far north, haloes of ice
arc above the sky. Slowly, Ovid’s Io turns to Isis
turns to Raven and takes off. Their textbooks lie
open on the desks. The days are growing colder.