What Rough Beast | Poem for February 23, 2019

Iris Jamahl Dunkle Ballad of the Russian River in Stop-Time house on a hill skirted by blackberry brambles. fingers bloodied with juice. fear on it’s haunches can’t see a black bear until it’s too late river threading around it The house was three stories suction tubes in walls became vacuums pool was cold as hell […]

What Rough Beast | Poem for February 15, 2019

Iris Jamahl DunkleArchive (a Duet) Mud, feel of silk. Mind can bloom intoanything, plant it deep enough.Marigolds loll on lollipop heads.Wind scatters and bends.[since California is its own muse…] Raw throated. Stormgrows. Loud as years. Hungeris something you hold in your hips.[within pure joy exists a kind of hollow] Things moving. Anonymity of motion.Face pressed […]

What Rough Beast | Poem for February 8, 2019

Iris Jamahl DunkleWhy I Forgot the Story of the Dead Child at Tioga Pass and my Okie Heritage The ascent alone could stop a heart. Shaleshards raining down hillsides in a slow slide.Have I ever told you, my heart can’t makeit up a climb that steep? Especially,wearing this dress of gravity and time.Especially, during a […]

What Rough Beast | Poem for February 1, 2019

Iris Jamahl DunkleThe Well Was an Eye Deep as a secret. Deep in the back woods.Off-limits. Underneath its rotted woodcover lived a colony of spiders,each big as a grown man’s fist, pulsing inthe dark. The well was a secret we weredrawn to: a place to pour out our darkness.We spoke of bodies we wanted to […]

What Rough Beast | Poem for August 5, 2018

Iris Jamahl Dunkle Medusa’s Broken Sonnet What is the meta for? I’ve got a blue- skied view to soothe my brain, days when I look up from hunch and shuffle of everyday. Night air punctuated by owls and howls of packs of coyotes. Moon a sliver— Limestone under me shifts its weight with shakes too […]

Poems in the Aftermath edited by Michael Broder

Poems in the Aftermath began as an online project of Indolent Books. The collection includes 73 poems by 73 different poets posted over the 73 days from November 9, 2016 (the day after Election Day) to January 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day). Because these poems were written during the immediate post-election transition period, they reflect the […]

Transition Poem 24 @ Dec. 2, 2016

Iris Jamahl Dunkle The Map The questions are slick as oil. Dive under that dark surface, that rainbow sheen as if there is something; espy, originate, pioneer without a map. Facts are rock bottom. Hit them, you’ll think: pay dirt. But, facts have cracks. California, born of earthquakes, can’t be trusted even in the solid. […]

Poem 184 ± December 5, 2015

Iris Jamahl Dunkle River We grew up in a town that took pride in high water marks. History is like that— river gone muddy with too much time. We forgot the sewage scare, how it shut down the river for weeks, how we were afraid to swim for fear of getting sick. We forgot the […]