This work (song lyrics) is published as poetry in the September 2024 issue of The Miserere Review. (Page 16/17). It is about the real-life story of Minik Wallace who was brought to the U.S. from Greenland in 1897 as a six year old boy. Ultimately he became an orphan and struggled to find his place of belonging well into his adulthood.
His story is echoed by many people from many cultures, who were each affected by the race to claim the North Pole. Writers have the power to help others think and feel things in new ways. And I believe there are times where it should be executed with great intention. In this case, it is about confronting the mistakes of the past and keeping them real for an audience today.
Cracking
Father showed me how to aim by narrowing one eye
Suspicious of the clues the wind just changes how it flies
His was the giant's bow the first that fell the caribou
Mine was the child size but I could shoot it past the moon
Crunching ice on the hull they promised us warm places
Captain will get paid in full for six of us as cargo wages
Museum gonna sleep us like a phantom in the basement
Living statues while we're sick and laying dead from the pneumonia
New York City raincoat don't fit right
Shattered ground and sky, Meteorite
I must bend without breaking
Let it go the whole distance
Cross the chasm while cracking
Truth is when it falls on me
We could die in peace and quiet if you move us to the farm
I'm adopted as a wild child I found the secret room
They split the flesh from the bone and bleach it for the study
But I knock three times: Give Me, Back My, Father's Body
Blankets at the funeral cover up the grief like a
Screeeeeee-eeeeeeeeech
My daddy woulda killed a man who laid a single hand
Or stop me from returning him to rock piles and country men
New York City raincoat don't fit right
Shattered ground and sky, Meteorite
I must bend without breaking… pull the string and point it
Let it go the whole distance… may it reach the target
Cross the chasm while cracking… let the arrow tell the
Truth is when it falls on me
Anchors up an empty man I sailed across the ocean
Over frozen sunken ships the specters long forgotten
Never got a burial he's warming in the underworld
I learned to speak and learned to hunt in places that my father's from
But that was seven years ago and now I swing my axe like a
Screeeeeee-eeeeeeeeech
Choppin wood in nowhere land a blade from giant iron rock
And every log looks like a man who's blanketed in blizzard fog
New York City raincoat don't fit right
Shattered ground and sky, Meteorite
I must bend without breaking… pull the string and point it
Let it go the whole distance… may it reach the target
Cross the chasm while cracking… let the arrow tell the
Truth is when it falls...