A Petition to Sarah Palin, from the Polar Bears

The starving miles grow longer for us now, Sarah.
The ice floes drift apart like prodigal planets,
making us surrender to the water and drown.
The cold sea is a taxidermist.
It keeps us too perfectly in its refrigerator
as the crabs pick our bones.
You don't yet know what it feels like
to be a deposed god in your own church.
You will.

We have a saying in our language:
"Beneath the surface, everything white is red."
The ice is a living creature;
scratch its skin and you'll find seal blood
bubbling up under its white fur.
Its heartbeat is our North Star,
our Ursa Minor, our cub.
But we can't feel it under our paws anymore,
and we grow lost.

We stand before you to represent the wolves,
the Kodiaks and the caribou.
We are the nightmares of the Arctic,
but we are the only dreams it has.
But now they fence us in with pipelines,
starve us with laws,
and when we are weak,
they come for us in airplanes
when we have no cover,
no wings.
Shoot us from above,
so far outside the reach of our claws.
You call this "hunting,"
but you don't call it "hunting" when you stand a prisoner
against a white wall as pockmarked as the moon.

And you, Sarah, sent out this air force of executioners
with the click of a pen.
We imagine you with your legs tightly crossed,
saying grace over a plate of wolf meat
in a dining room wallpapered with grizzly pelts.
You must think you're a real predator,
Sarah Barricuda,
pit bull suckling the microphone,
chanting "Drill Baby Drill"
until all the humans howl for blood.
You think beneath the surface, everything white is black.
You think you can kill your native monsters with a wink.
And the worst part is,
you know you can.

Step out on the ice with us.
This is your subpoena.
We'll show you what it means to be a real predator.
We'll let you have your rifle, your Bible,
and the famous moose-dressing knife.
Step out on the ice in the boots you bought in New York.
Try to become us. Wear the bearskin rug
you used to make love on,
the beast on which you conceived your brood.
Try to find us in the white.
We can smell your perfume from further than you can see.
We will be watching you with lifeless eyes
as the crabs devour us,
as you cannot find us on the ice
because we are under your feet now,

as the bear mask falls further over your face,

as the plane begins to circle,

as the ice applies its red lipstick.