The Polar Bears of Kolyuchin Island

(after photos by Vadim Makhorov)

by JC Reilly

Out of the wooden shelter, covered in lichens

and missing boards, two polar bears peep,

ready to shuffle down stairs into brown boggy grass.

The research station is their home now,

even with its broken windows and open doors.

The Russians would call this perestroika

of a sort, a restructuring of the purpose

of the station, from cataloguing weather

to housing apex predators, cuddly-looking

as they may be. Here, one bear stares to her right,

while the other gazes directly at the drone

taking his picture, his head resting on a rickety banister,

its white paint scuffed black in 30 years of dirt.

(Not that he seems to mind.) It’s like this:

with warming temps, and scarcity, the bare

cities of ice they roamed fall into the sea.

By eminent domain, these squatters stake their claim,

keeping house, to the delight of all of us

who see Makhorov’s photographs. Until

we recall ice should coat that brown boggy grass

and polar bears shouldn’t live in weather stations.

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JC Reilly has work published or forthcoming from Tulane Review, Tar River Poetry, The Closed Eye Open, and Connecticut River Review. She lives in Marietta, GA with three cats, and is the editor of the Atlanta Review. Follow her on Bluesky @aishatonu.bsky.social or IG @jc.reilly.