Kersten Christianson
Alaskan Poet, Moon Gazer, Raven Watcher, Northern Trekker, Teacher. Kersten Christianson derives inspiration from wild, wanderings, and road trips. Kersten is the poetry editor of Alaska Women Speak. She has authored Curating the House of Nostalgia (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2020), What Caught Raven’s Eye (Petroglyph Press, 2018), and Something Yet to Be Named (Kelsay Books, 2017). Kersten lives with her daughter in Sitka, Alaska and enjoys road trips, bookstores, and smooth ink pens.
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Slice the Fruit Thin
The cusp of autumn lands,
a golden crisped crust
of warming pear galette
drowning in the last light
feathering the stark ridgeline,
bend of an angel’s wing,
between daylight and dark.
Pockets of ginger, cinnamon,
dust the echo of a day.
The knife’s serrated blade
cuts and partitions sweet pie
without the hungered, sharp
snap of wolves waiting
in the wings, waiting.
Autumnal
At the equinox,
Starrigavin Estuary
is flooded by tide.
Dark currents corkscrew,
wide-whirl flotsam and jetsam
around skinny knees
of edge-fishing blue
herons. Do they sense the chill
of termination
dust, light sugaring
of peripheral alpine?
Do they sense this change
of season, this tide’s ebbing,
this hushed darkening of days?
Once again, the Wolf Moon.
Throwing me shade, she wraps
her side-eyed glittering gaze
around Arrowhead’s peak, ogling
me through the bare-branched
alders of her ragged eyelashes
mascara-caked, the smeared
foolhardiness and folly
of the previous year: heart-chase,
book-hoard, chance-snatch.
I can howl at the fall of the cards,
the glass-shard brokenness of how
love goes awry under a rubbernecking
moon. Or I can resolve to try again,
to try again, to try again.
this hushed darkening of days?
New Year Redux
Once again, the Wolf Moon.
Throwing me shade, she wraps
her side-eyed glittering gaze
around Arrowhead’s peak, ogling
me through the bare-branched
alders of her ragged eyelashes
mascara-caked, the smeared
foolhardiness and folly
of the previous year: heart-chase,
book-hoard, chance-snatch.
I can howl at the fall of the cards,
the glass-shard brokenness of how
love goes awry under a rubbernecking
moon. Or I can resolve to try again,
to try again, to try again.
