File #2227: "Ciera Higginbotham_Alaska.pdf"
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Somewhere in Ketchikan, Alaska
On a crabbing expedition, you learn that the Alaskan Dungeness crab
lays 2.5 million eggs every mating season. You wonder about this
because you are born with all the eggs you are ever going to have.
You also worry about the feast to come after the tour, but then
the guide explains that only the male crabs are legally caught, sold, and eaten.
Flipping a female on her back to immobilize her,
he lets you touch her silky fibers. Your eyes widen
at the impossible softness of those hair-like stems––
like cat fur. Or maybe a chinchilla’s. On the boat, your guide
points out an active eagle nest. In the tops of spindly branches,
sticks have been cross-stitched and plaited into a bowl.
The guide, in his hunter’s orange fishing waders, throws small fish
off the back of the boat to swooping, white-skulled birds,
and you remember a recurring dream you have about a giant
bird, ugly and skinned––the kind that looks like
someone plucked away its feathers from the neck up.
This mother-bird has built her nest above a restaurant pavilion,
and, when she flies, the world trembles. Snagging several
patrons by their napes, she carries them to her nest. She sits
there and waits on her speckled eggs to hatch, but, with your luck,
you wake up before the first shell cracks and rains down on your head.
A part of you wants to join her up there. A part of you
wants to stand on her shoulders, arms parallel to wings,
and let the wind sweep inside, scooping you hollow.
Bio:
Ciera Higginbotham currently teaches composition and creative writing at Mississippi State
University and is a consultant at The Writing Center. She received her MFA in Poetry from
Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020, after previously graduating with her MA (’17)
and BA (’15) in English from MSU. When she’s not marveling at her cat, Grip, she can
usually be found marveling at, and falling in love with, language.
On a crabbing expedition, you learn that the Alaskan Dungeness crab
lays 2.5 million eggs every mating season. You wonder about this
because you are born with all the eggs you are ever going to have.
You also worry about the feast to come after the tour, but then
the guide explains that only the male crabs are legally caught, sold, and eaten.
Flipping a female on her back to immobilize her,
he lets you touch her silky fibers. Your eyes widen
at the impossible softness of those hair-like stems––
like cat fur. Or maybe a chinchilla’s. On the boat, your guide
points out an active eagle nest. In the tops of spindly branches,
sticks have been cross-stitched and plaited into a bowl.
The guide, in his hunter’s orange fishing waders, throws small fish
off the back of the boat to swooping, white-skulled birds,
and you remember a recurring dream you have about a giant
bird, ugly and skinned––the kind that looks like
someone plucked away its feathers from the neck up.
This mother-bird has built her nest above a restaurant pavilion,
and, when she flies, the world trembles. Snagging several
patrons by their napes, she carries them to her nest. She sits
there and waits on her speckled eggs to hatch, but, with your luck,
you wake up before the first shell cracks and rains down on your head.
A part of you wants to join her up there. A part of you
wants to stand on her shoulders, arms parallel to wings,
and let the wind sweep inside, scooping you hollow.
Bio:
Ciera Higginbotham currently teaches composition and creative writing at Mississippi State
University and is a consultant at The Writing Center. She received her MFA in Poetry from
Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020, after previously graduating with her MA (’17)
and BA (’15) in English from MSU. When she’s not marveling at her cat, Grip, she can
usually be found marveling at, and falling in love with, language.