Let Me Introduce You to the Season of Want
Let me introduce you to the season of want. Rain falls with insidious intent to tell to tell to tell. Shale cliffs shed their secrets once covered in ice, chip by jagged chip. How to reverse this erasure?
How to find words buried deep in our throats—words that glowed red as coals—those long winter nights. Soon, spring will erupt flower hungry. New rain will wash (no, bear) what was covered. Let me introduce you to the thin, white roots of history no longer under the influence of winter stupor and ice.
We are digging now.
We are covered in our filth.
Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s poetry collection, There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air, will be published in February 2016. Her previous collection, Gold Passage, won the Trio Award and was published by Trio House Press in 2013. Her chapbooks Inheritance and The Flying Trolley were published by Finishing Line Press in 2010 and 2013. She teaches at Napa Valley College and is on the staff of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.