Page 62 - WTP Vol.VII #2

iRiS JaMahL dunKLe
Artists Speak of the Elements
That the people in the room had all looked in
the river and once seen only themselves
was evident. That was before the smoke
cleared. Now, their minds were like dandelions— puffs of seed clouds lost and found by the wind.
There was the man who bent steel. The girl who found treasures buried in ash. Another
who whispered the words of others in ash.
The invisible is thick. We agreed.
And when the world in all its forms is on fire you can’t help but find another
element to inhabit in this bold
wind. Perhaps the world can be replanted after all? We dreamed in a room of scorched earth and believed it could bloom.
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Dunkle was the 2017–2018 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA. Her poetry collections include Interrupted Geographies (2017), There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air (2015), and Gold Passage (2013). Her biography on Charmian Kittredge London, Jack London’s wife, will be published by University of Oklahoma Press in Spring 2020. Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.