her down upon the rock until she rolls

her belly up, blank eyes wet in supplication.

This is how I imagine it. The event being

“no sight a lady should witness,” the Senior

Agent forbids me from the rookeries; John,

my husband now these thirteen months,

must privately describe it. Libby, he tells me,

you should see how soulful they are, it is

amazing to watch them weep. He takes joy

in their human qualities, recalls tales

of selkies who turned to seal-like girls

in surf, braiding their hair in seaweed plaits

to chain an errant sailor’s legs. And yet,

in seasons such as this he goes out with company

men to kill the mating seals in their rookeries,

drive them to ground with wooden clubs.

I’ve heard the sounds and smelled grease fires

smoking after skins are flensed, seen John

creep back from work, clothes spattered with blood.

How many months to be endured! And all before winter

comes, its long months unpunctuated by sun—

And yet I can’t complain, having begged John

to take me, a lone white woman at these edges

of the Pribilofs. Reluctant first, he is, I think,

now proud of me. Without a maid, John is the one

to tighten my stays, fetch me

paper, drawing pencils, tea. When he’s gone

I walk as far as the officers will let me,

to sketch a little of the matkas and their young.

Yesterday, a shape disturbed me

at the game: some wraith shadowing

Nah Speel’s rocks I noticed late, absorbed

by the sight of two bulls hissing and spitting

at each other, while a third made off

with the spoil they longed for: the matka

flattened on the glassy ground. Interesting,

isn’t it, Elizabeth? the wraith addressed me.

I looked. It was the Senior Agent—

He is, as I wrote before, the dark one

who follows me on my rounds, complaining

of my presence here. He charts my walks

around the island; once, in the mess hall

pinched my arm in passing, hissing, Selfish

to remain—

At home I raged at John,

who shook his head, but will say nothing.

How can it be selfish to claim my rights

beside the one I love? A loud groan, the sea’s

kaboom, and one of the bulls, his shoulder

pierced deeply, struggled off.

I watched his slow creep back into the sea,

his shape dissolving inside a curl of blood.

When I looked up, the Senior Agent was gone.

Tonight, I send along a sketch I’ve done

of a bull with his sleek matka, half-drawn,

only the heads and eyes completely finished, that

peculiar quality to their gaze I struggle

to capture: that clear, yet fathomless unblinking

from which occasionally come—to John’s

continued astonishment—real tears.

II. Go West

II

GO WEST

Diamond Lil is all mine. I’m she. She’s I. Like Hamlet, but funnier.

Mae West