September 25, 2026

Destruction by Joanne Kyger

First of all do you remember the way a bear goes through a cabin when nobody is home? He goes through the front door. I mean he really goes through it. Then he takes the cupboard off the wall and eats a can of lard.   He eats all the apples, limes, dates, bottled decaffeinated coffee, and 35 pounds of granola. The asparagus soup cans fall to the floor. Yum! He chomps up Norwegian crackers stashed for the winter. And the bouillon, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, onions, potatoes.   He rips the Green Tara poster from the wall. Tries the Coleman Mustard. Spills the ink, tracks in the flour. Goes up stairs and takes a shit. Rips open the water bed, eats the incense and drinks the perfume. Knocks over the Japanese tansu and the Persian miniature of a man on horseback watching a woman bathing.   Knocks Shelter, Whole Earth Catalogue, Planet Drum, Northern Mists, Truck Tracks, and Women’s Sports into the oozing water bed mess.   He goes down stairs and out the back wall. He keeps on going for a long way and finds a good cave to sleep it all off. Luckily he ate the whole medicine cabinet, including stash of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, Amanita, Benzedrine, Valium and aspirin. __________ “Destruction,” by JOANNE KYGER.   Photographer Dmitry Kokh discovered polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation.