tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-184076092024-03-07T18:14:33.468-05:00Poet 2.0Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.comBlogger250125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-80218982282048668242015-01-02T19:59:00.000-05:002015-01-02T19:59:04.849-05:00Day 2: Clean<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Day 2 brought images of turkey vultures airing their wings in the morning sun and this attempt at a sonnet. </span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Clean <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">This morning, turkey
vultures arced and spread </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
their great wings to gather warmth back into </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
their dark bodies. It’s called “sunbathing” or </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
“spreading” – a means of getting back what </span></span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">you've</span></span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
lost under the dizzy stars of night. Stop</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
gawking. Think about what slant truths rose up </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
to meet you last night. Who wouldn’t
wish to</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
burn clean at dawn? The nights are
growing long</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
the stars gone sharp in the crisp night air like</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
so many suspect tunnels offering </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
a powdery out. We go to sleep in </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
this skin only to awaken in </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
another skin. Never saw it coming.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">
Nothing left to do but rise bath in light. </span></span></div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-18276039819792942192015-01-01T17:43:00.002-05:002015-01-01T19:07:43.698-05:00Day 1 of 30: Strong<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Alright, it's January and time to poem-a-day! Thanks to Nicole Callihan for giving me the push to write this month! Over the next 30 days, I'll be attempting to write a poem a day. This one, is based on my word for the year: strong.<br>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Strong<br><br><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It feels good to lift heavy weights. Think Samson. Think
legs sprouted from redwoods. Think holding
up the whole fucking sky. Body like a fortified city, everything unnecessary
falling from it Then, the drop, the lightening, the satisfying thud.<br>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When we look at strong bodied women, we first see their
faces (enough make up? Pretty, or butch?). Then, the bared abs, almost reptilian,
the thick muscled legs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A swimmers body (especially a butterflyer) will not fit
into a normally sized prom dress or wedding dress. <br>
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When you swim far distances, you have to find a place inside yourself that no
longer contains your mind. Think glass
carved out with fists. Think universe of forward motion. Think nothing but
shore.<br><br><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The women competing for the title of “the strongest woman
in the world” climb ropes thicker than their arms. Drag laden sleds. Lift
barbells greater than twice their weight.
Though beautiful, not one will be pictured on a magazine cover outside
of her sport. A strong woman isn’t
marketable.<br><br><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When you swim across a large lake for many hours the only
thing you can see is the vinculum between sky and the dark, murky water below. <br><br><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is a line we draw between fit and over-fit. We hold
that line with images of women who walk in between. Starve enough. Burn enough
to need. Even the swimming catalogs use models who don’t have strong backs or
biceps that could pull their bodies out of the water.<br><br><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At the end of the Crossfit games, the top three winners grin
and wave from a podium, at ease in their strong bodies. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><font face="Garamond, serif" size="3"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Perhaps, they are asking us to become indestructible. </span></font></div><div class="MsoNormal"><font face="Garamond, serif" size="3"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br></span></font></div><div class="MsoNormal"><font face="Garamond, serif" size="3"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Perhaps, with their strength, they can hold up the sky long enough for us to pass through.</span></font></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-10105058073194252652014-12-29T17:11:00.002-05:002014-12-29T17:17:35.814-05:00Revision: The Nature of the Place<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For this week's prompt we were to again go back to a poem we wrote this past year and revise it. I chose to go back to one of my Laguna poems that was still driving me crazy. And thanks to the feedback from my writing group I trimmed and trimmed and came up with this. Hopefully, what I trimmed away was right! This poem is about the egret specifically and how the Audubon society was actually formed just to save this one bird that was being decimated by the plume trade. But, the poem is also about how even though (thanks to their hard work in the 1920s) the egrets are back and thriving in the Laguna, we still are stewards to their destruction. That the damaged we've caused to their habitat will last forever and though the Laguna may now look better there is still damage lurking underneath. Here is my newest attempt at a draft!<br />
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The Nature of the Place</span><br /></b></div>
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"The nature of the place—whether high or low, moist or dry, whether
sloping north or south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs—generally gives
hint as to its inhabitants." </span></i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">--John James Audubon<br /><br /><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Today, on the Laguna, one can still see <br />
the shock of a white, plumed body<br />
punctuate the space between raw, golden field, <br />
and the open question of sky<br />
because somehow, the Great Egret, the Snowy Egret<br />
and the Cattle Egret have survived.<br />
<br />
Once the Laguna pulsed, the heart of the plume trade.<br />
Desperate hunters climbed high into scrub oaks and willows <br />
to raid the egrets’ giant stick nests <br />
for <i>aigrettes</i>, white waterfalls
of long, thin feathers<br />
used to adorn fashionable hats<br />
because an ounce of feathers was worth <br />
double the price of gold. <br />
Soon, spotting an egret became so rare<br />
sightings were printed in the local paper.<br />
<br />
Until the Audubon society was formed<br />
to rescue these ghost birds from extinction.<br />
to slow the pulse of the plume trades<br />
and slowly the egrets numbers began to rise.<br />
<br />
But, the nature of the place – <br />
the lack of steelhead and salmon<br />
swimming in the deep, green lagoons,<br />
the felled oaks and cleared willows, <br />
the waters gone thick with sediment – <br />
tell the story of its inhabitants<br />
not just of the birds, but of us.<br />
We are stewards to the destruction we’ve caused forever.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So when you walk the smooth paths of the Laguna today <br />
and sight the white arrow of an egret piercing <br />
the camouflage among what is water, earth, and sky <br />
remember the hunt that still pushes from the ground up,<br />
and how beauty must survive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-15106957827399220472014-12-22T16:05:00.004-05:002014-12-22T16:05:56.996-05:00Dear Heart -<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For this week's poem we were to revise a poem we wrote off of a prompt this last year that we wanted to go back to. The one I chose was the toughest for me to write. Not, sure it is even past a draft here. This isn't a topic I often write about, but it is one we should all be talking about more: what it is like to raise a child who isn't "normal" and how society, and our doctors deal with parents and children who are going through the terribly scary period of pre-diagnosis. <br />
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<b><span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Dear Heart –<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">1<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Big lug of muscle. How you drag
me down! Don’t you know I come from the sort of town that’s named after a
standoff? Where a man stood three, aching leg days waiting outside the general
store for another man who hid inside? Where everything is too fogged in to see
clearly. Where the ocean is too cold to
swim? <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I don’t live in a cul-de-sac, heart.
I live on a barn on a hill where I can see for miles into the cathedral
of sky. Where rain percusses against the
tin roof. Where the creek gathers and gathers until there is a storm. Where the trees ache and murmur in the winds.
Where the morning sparrows punctuated the sky’s blue dome with ellipses that
come from the sea. What does it mean to carry something to this place that is
so un-nameable? <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">But these days I have thick fingers and heavy, slippery feet.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">2<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Each doctor who has met with my son picks an edge of the tapestry to
pullout and name without seeing the whole. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">What we are given are small golden threads gathered and rewoven into unrecognizable
shapes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">There is a part of me that wants to mitigate the conflict. <br />
<i>That part of me is you, heart.<br />
<br />
</i>There is a part of me that steps up to the man standing knee deep in the
mud outside of the general store just to whisper in his ear, <i>you don’t want to be remembered for this</i>.<br />
<br />
There is the part of me who is the man waiting for fate to walk in and throw
him against the dry goods, to have his face pressed into the dirt floor until
he screams. <br />
<i>Heart, that floor is so close, I can
smell it.<br />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">And then there is my son. My beautiful,
suffering son.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">3<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">On the radio program the parents of children with named mental disorders
told their stories to the interviewer as if they were in confession. They were honest. They were on the other side of a dark journey
looking back.<br />
<br />
There was the young child’s palpable rage how it breathed and feathered the air. Or, how the child ran and ran until he could
find a tree that contain the enormous perch of his fear. <br />
<br />
There were the holes punched into plaster walls. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">There were the volley of shouts and screams that seemed to echo out from
another deeper well of a body.<br />
<br />
There were the locked doors, then, the removal of locks.<br />
<br />
There were the people brought in to teach safety and discipline to parents who
hadn't slept soundly in years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">There was the locking away of knives and scissors and baseball bats
(just in case). <br />
There was the teaching of body holds.<br />
There were the words:<i> police
intervention.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">There was the moment I looked into their stories and saw my own.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">4<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />But what do we do heart without a diagnosis? What if we or the doctors or the schools step back only
to see the blur of a face, the energy of
a being that is different from what we know to name? <br /><br />But, I know him through the fog, heart. I know his heart once beat inside of me and no matter how long I must stand, I will stand outside the door waiting for him to step out. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">5<br /><o:p></o:p></span><span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />So I step back heart. I step back and back and try to see the whole
portrait for what it is. I turn off the
radio. I dig up the god-damned history
of my town and try to understand more than what we've left to speak for itself
and I try to write it all down.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Because a story is never simple, heart, is it? Not one that is stitched in my own blood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-54256814425306977422014-12-15T14:37:00.000-05:002014-12-15T14:37:15.091-05:00Home is an Uncanny Valley<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">For this week's poem, we experimented with writing about nature through digital devices/terminology. I have a fond place in my heart for writing poetry with a variety of computer code languages mashed up in it. So, in this draft, I tried that again. Not sure if it make sense to anyone besides myself! But, here is my effort:</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Home
is an Uncanny Valley</span></b><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
<br />
if <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>the rain continues <br />
then<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>we may lose our escape down the
gravel throated drive.<br />
<truth> we are hungry for the rain </truth><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">if <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>the rain edits
the earth of the fields, <br />
if <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>the rain rewrites the
soapstone creek bed <br />
if <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>the ditches we dug into the
earth just yesterday overflow<br />if we no longer recognize the sky</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
then <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>the path back to ourselves could
be blurred by the many rainstorms before<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">LIST#<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>1987, 1992,
2005</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">PRINT#<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Each flood,
spilling into the next like a series of connected lakes.<br />
<br />
<fear> the child looking out the rain freckled window could be ourselves</fear><br />
<truth> we are hungry for the rain </truth><br />
<fear> we are hungry for the truth</fear><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The reservoirs are low exposing what we’d forgotten: old logs,
rusted cars, a body or two.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">If <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>we flood again<br />
than <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>we could forget the hunger<br />
than <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>we could forget what’s
underneath, exposed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">If <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>home is an uncanny valley <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>AND<br />
we walk toward it, see that it is too much like ourselves to believe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Then the fields, the creek beds, the gravel throated drive<br />
will scream muddy loud<br />
<br />
<fear> the child looking out the rain freckled window could be ourselves</fear><br />
<truth> we are hungry for the rain </truth><br />
<fear> we are hungry for the truth</fear><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Let home = null/washed new/a
place built upon a place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Let memory fade like a fog<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Let the child at the window be
my child, not myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Let the water find its path
back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Let the rain spell truth on
the tin roof above our sleeping heads.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-60829814431873205502014-12-08T21:54:00.001-05:002014-12-09T08:44:47.704-05:00Sonnet After Lines Written by Jack London<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOpE4zy7ItjQHeK7hnc1HVIVqMA6d-qJcYKVfBCcpl8k20d9cnoHnzapyjc_StzQ6ydrIj5f7wOrpCsPFOkhpXdA0srDVA_3rETp_Hq2ueGI-zUOwGb0aV8amhObVp8vxoyENTzA/s640/blogger-image--147100651.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOpE4zy7ItjQHeK7hnc1HVIVqMA6d-qJcYKVfBCcpl8k20d9cnoHnzapyjc_StzQ6ydrIj5f7wOrpCsPFOkhpXdA0srDVA_3rETp_Hq2ueGI-zUOwGb0aV8amhObVp8vxoyENTzA/s200/blogger-image--147100651.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Oak tree underneath which Jack London wrote.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<b>Sonnet Written After Lines from Jack London</b></div>
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<i>Appearances are ghosts. Life is a ghost</i></div>
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<i>land -- </i>Take, for instance the towering oak</div>
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that splays its blackened arteries toward sky,</div>
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unaware that already a pair of</div>
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buzzards perch and clot the spiral of</div>
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tributaries that wind and unwind toward</div>
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whatever blue has arrived. How like our</div>
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own aging bodies it stands passenger</div>
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of air and time but blind as a prophet,</div>
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blind as Tiresias, we step into</div>
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this wooden shell and we rise. Shake off</div>
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that tingling rot the fog brought in</div>
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because <i>life lies in order to live</i> and</div>
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we'll never know how many dark birds brood</div>
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and shadow this ghost land, this life.</div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-17794626587894844172014-12-01T23:40:00.003-05:002014-12-02T00:11:15.489-05:00An Elegy of Sky for Paula<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj792ij80X7Hk3YPTOWcFc8qUT1D3tdejcaWIU6tYCJfWiePVQ_mcQhVBPpwMMv7YxF3neRlhO9p6x4PmRMoUUzxGHpZgyrK4z3idCP_nwULo4kCdQKdcCzixdxPtbEOHqK_DtPVA/s1600/light.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">U<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj792ij80X7Hk3YPTOWcFc8qUT1D3tdejcaWIU6tYCJfWiePVQ_mcQhVBPpwMMv7YxF3neRlhO9p6x4PmRMoUUzxGHpZgyrK4z3idCP_nwULo4kCdQKdcCzixdxPtbEOHqK_DtPVA/s1600/light.jpg" height="200" width="200"></a></div>
For this week's poem we were to write a poem of release. Since today is my recently lost friend Paula's birthday, I couldn't help but write a poem for her today especially when I saw how incredible the sky was tonight. Here is a poem that remembers her through the landscape she loved.<br>
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<b>An Elegy of Sky<br><i>for Paula</i></b><br>
<br>
These winter days we are told to repair <br>ourselves; to stuff whatever it takes<br>into the cracks that open up from us:<br>sand, feathers, hot, melted gold. Or, to live <br>with that space even as it is still opening<br>and let whatever force--light or dark--shine in.<br>
<br>
Yours was such a simple ceremony:<br>thin line dug into rocky sand, handful <br>of red flowers scattered like joy or sorrow,<br>
then the ashes: what clouds, what rises,<br>what will meet the decision (that cold shock) of sea.<br>
<br>The sky opened up today and revealed <br>through furrows of cathedral clouds<br>a thick, bright shaft of light pouring from<br>the unknown above down to the valley floor.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">As I drove down into it, what opened up in me were questions.<br>
<br>
Can we fill the cracks that open in us?<br>Or, do we let them breath the air and sea?</div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-52617689955051522932014-11-24T18:21:00.001-05:002014-11-24T18:21:20.675-05:00After Visiting Jack London’s Grave on the Day of his Death, November 22, 2014<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA2o-CcXXZHz4OrMlKiJMl8YyXYoDgNrYV2h9zQd8keo25dm2JQIm_hJIvpmviGPnLZUsShHleSDgquiSXrQGWNi4CZnDlhzUwT8OvSDBQLW7BPvT5Jt81M7I1Oru-ms4pqKa_iQ/s1600/Jack+London+3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA2o-CcXXZHz4OrMlKiJMl8YyXYoDgNrYV2h9zQd8keo25dm2JQIm_hJIvpmviGPnLZUsShHleSDgquiSXrQGWNi4CZnDlhzUwT8OvSDBQLW7BPvT5Jt81M7I1Oru-ms4pqKa_iQ/s1600/Jack+London+3.png" /></a></div>
For this week's prompt, we were to write off of <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/162/5#!/20603668/0" target="_blank">Mary Oliver's poem "August".</a> I had the incredible experience this past weekend of getting to read one of my poems at Jack London's grave at a ceremony remembering his death. It was an incredibly moving experience. This poem is written in response to that experience and Mary Oliver's poem. It's only a draft, but it is a step toward my new project: writing a book of poetry about Jack London. <br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After
Visiting Jack London’s Grave on the Day of his Death, November 22, 2014</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are gates, once redwood strong,
we have left to rot as evidence of our departure and return.<br />
<br />
There is the way the wind roars in the trees like a ravenous sea when we
speak, shipwrecked from the dead. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is the weight of the
urn Charmian carried the day of his funeral. How it became
heavier with silence every step she took closer to the wagon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is the first stone barn lost to
our eyes that is folding back into itself. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There
is what remains inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What remains
unclaimed in darkness: a lost wagon, perhaps?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The rotting hull of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Snark</i>?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are the voices of strangers we
sew together in order to find the story we can’t feel with our hands in this
dark.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is the seam where what we <i>know</i> welds
smoothly into what we <i>feel</i>.<i> </i>A new, steel gate that
will not rot.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are the phone numbers to the dead
written on a cedar plank wall in a closet now empty of a phone. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is the desire that opens up like
a mountain view that was lost to nearly a century of brush.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is what opens up when we finally
see into it:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></div>
<h1 style="margin: 0.67em 0in 0.67em 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">A valley of murmurous air.<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-71752217797585721992014-11-18T19:11:00.001-05:002014-11-18T19:11:57.133-05:00Draft of There's a Ghost of This Machine of Air is complete!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last weekend, for some reason a pocket of time opened up and I finished my draft of my next book, There's a Ghost in this Machine of Air. The manuscript is most likely not as done as I think it is, but the fact that it is written and organized in a manner I think is working right now is a huge reason to celebrate (in my opinion). This does mean that I won't be writing more poems about the Laguna de Santa Rosa (for the time being!) Moving on from a project of that magnitude is always difficult for me. Since I am a poet who is project driven, being project-less, or not focused on completing a project makes it hard for me to write. Here is my attempt to move on this week. We were asked to write a poem where we talk about why we are dissatisfied with what we've got. Here's my attempt at a draft:<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">November<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Thankful for the gates we pass under: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">braided galaxies of swallows<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">netted against grey combed skies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">This time of year earth’s desire—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">lace of steam that rises to meet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">dawn’s chorus is nothing to be netted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What shadows have escaped our watch in the night?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The last remaining green grasses bent by dew.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Light warming, slowly; letting that weight go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-1762103068362443642014-11-11T13:43:00.002-05:002014-11-11T13:43:20.410-05:00Polaroid Cape May, 1996<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For this week's poem, we wrote a poem in remembrance of a great poet. Here is my small tribute to Galway Kinnell.</div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<b>Polaroid Cape May,
1996<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Soft continuous clicks <br />
spill from a manual <br />
typewriter against walls <br />
thin and delicate as shells;<br />
<br />early morning sea air <br />
still thick with fog<br />
covers and uncovers<br />
the pilings with<br />
the iron breath of sea<br />
<br />
like the memory of a poem <br />
carefully carved out <br />
so that every experience after<br />
washes against it<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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and comes back changed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-91772531875253504182014-11-03T15:54:00.003-05:002014-11-03T15:54:13.862-05:00Laguna Continued - Finding Ballard Lake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For this week's prompt, we were to write off of this amazing poem "Troubled Asset Relief" by Robert Ostrum which offered us a fractured question and response model to dive into. I am still in the process if completing my Laguna poems, so my questions and answers (or attempts at answers) circled around a lost lake from the Laguna that was previously called Grays Lake or Ballard Lake depending on the time period. Here is my attempt at a draft for this week:<br />
<br />
<strong>Finding Ballard Lake</strong><br />
What you said was we ruined the water<br />not we rewrote the land with dynamite<br />and the pulsing, yellow jaws of backhoes.<br />
<br />When I said rev up your mind, what I asked<br />was for you to contain a lake--call it<br />Gray's or Ballard. Let it spill forth<br />
<br />
over half a mile. Let it straddle<br />a hundred yards of earth. Cover its banks<br />with exclamations of ash and oak and willow.<br />
<br />
Dig it deep enough that catfish and bass<br />linger in the shadows. Then let doubt<br />fill you like a balloon. Go belly up.<br />
<br />
Try to recall the blue bloom of sky seen<br />from this angle. Dark, cold water pressing<br />no holding you up; warm sun on your face.<br />
Know that to know is to dive deep into <br />the sediment of what isn't possible to find.<br />
<br />
Wait at the closest train station: Mt. Olivet<br />for someone who has a memory made from<br />spun-sugar clouds whose footsteps can stitch<br />
<br />
back the lost route of Mark West Creek<br />whose sediment was used to fill in the lake,<br />the acres of low spots on the ranch.<br />
<br />
So that when they ask you who ruined this place<br />you can answer with a tongue made of peach peels<br />and a mouth full of sewage. With eyes backlit<br />with dynamite and the smooth shine of dirt.</div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-6119763494316912332014-10-28T09:58:00.000-04:002014-10-28T09:58:18.666-04:00Laguna Continued - The Linguist Staff<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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T<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">his week we went ekphrastic, meaning we wrote poems off of art objects. The piece of art that struck me was a staff from Ghana called<a href="http://www.mfah.org/art/100-highlights/linguist-staff-and-top-representing-elephant/" target="_blank"> </a><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;"><a href="http://www.mfah.org/art/100-highlights/linguist-staff-and-top-representing-elephant/" target="_blank">Linguist Staff and Top Representing an Elephant</a> </i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 21px;">because it struck me as such a metaphor for how we should proceed forward talking about history and understanding the present, always with our hand touching the ears that remember the past, that are listening to what we are saying. </span></span></div>
<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Linguist Staff<br /><span class="apple-converted-space"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">is covered in ears. Not real ears, but
carved, <br />
extruding, so each grip reminds fingers <br />
that the ears exist. No need to pour
these <br />
ears onto a table to illustrate<br />
a point. Instead, through touch, the
linguist speaks <br />
through the ears. When he holds the golden staff <br />
and speaks he knows the ears are listening.
<br />
This is a way to proceed on the rutted path <br />
of history. If we keep our fingers <br />
locked tightly on those golden ears perhaps<br />
we won’t forget that the past listens, and<br />
expects us to circle back and look under<br />
what we think we know even if the path<br />
is overgrown, impassable, or lost. .<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-17612024717823934032014-10-21T16:11:00.001-04:002014-10-21T20:43:24.328-04:00Laguna: The Lesson of Mud and Potatoes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This week, I had trouble writing from the prompt we were given. It was a great prompt: to write off of Kim Addonizio's poem <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171221" target="_blank">"What Women Want"</a>. But, difficult can be good, because it can make you split something open that you've been stuck in your ways about. I find when I'm writing a narrative-based project like the one I am currently working on, the Laguna de Santa Rosa, I need to be shaken up. I need to have someone pull the rug out from beneath me. Not sure, if I found my legs afterward yet, but here's my draft of a poem for this week. It's still on the Laguna, but it goes in a bit of a different direction.<br>
<br>
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<span style="background: rgb(240, 240, 240);"><span style="color: #365f91; font-family: Cambria; font-size: large;">The Lesson of Mud and Potatoes</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #365f91;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: rgb(240, 240, 240); font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">“</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">History comes in many forms — some of it, apparently,
edible.”<br>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>–Gaye LaBaron</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: rgb(240, 240, 240); font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="background: rgb(240, 240, 240); font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br>
What a citizen wants is to peel back<br>
the skin of history that shields a place<br>
the single story that survives record.<br>
Time offers its own flood—washes out roads<br>
of thought no matter how deep the ruts run.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br>
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<span style="background: rgb(240, 240, 240); font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">To ask what it was like to be a
passenger <br>
on Bill Tibbet’s bone-jarring stage coach ride <br>
from the docks of the Petaluma River <br>
to the potato mines of Bodega<br>
where nutty-flavored red-skinned potatoes<br>
thrived in the salty, mineral soil<br>
until blight wiped out the crop; until we<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br>
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<span style="background: rgb(240, 240, 240); font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">forgot to tend the road between then and<br>
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When landmarks like Spud Point<br>
loom mysterious instead of marking<br>
the story they once told: a barge too full<br>of potatoes that sunk at the spot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br>
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<span style="background: rgb(240, 240, 240); font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">How to still imagine each stop the stage<br>
took in 1860 after winter rains <br>
left roads nearly impassable<br>
mud to our knees, wheels stuck in ruts but the<br>
Laguna swollen and fertile, offering<br>
a passage across in the steam engine <br>
ship Georgina or later the Pride of the Laguna.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br>
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<span style="background: rgb(240, 240, 240); font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What questions should a citizen ask to
dredge this out?<br>
So we can dig up a few forgotten tubers of those lost potatoes,<br>
so that we can find that tin-rusted hull of a ship,<br>
to carry us back to a place that speaks <br>
in more than one voice, that we continually <br>
rewrite and remember.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br>
</div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-19738151670799602282014-10-14T09:39:00.000-04:002014-10-14T14:18:50.048-04:00The Laguna Continued - The 100 Year Flood, 1986<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This week, we were to write about an uncertain memory. I chose to write about the way we often remember natural disasters. I was twelve in 1986 and the flood that swept the Russian River, almost completely submerging the town of Guerneville, and flooding many parts of Sonoma County (including the street where I lived). My Uncle and Aunt and cousins lived and had a shop in downtown Guerneville. So, for me, this natural disaster looms as one of the biggest and closest of my life. But, this was a disaster that happened before news media was reactive and everywhere. So, those who weren't here then, have a hard time understanding the brevity of it. For them, the history of Sonoma County (as Gaye LeBaron puts it in the quotation below) begins the day they arrived. Part of my Laguna poem sequence is based on helping foster that remembering.<br>
<br>
<h1>
The 100 Year Flood, 1986 <br>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";">“But people are like that about natural
disasters. Everyone believes that the
history on any place began the day they arrived.” --Gaye LeBaron<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br>
</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Memory is as uncertain as
islands<br>
that rise in a flood—you don’t know what lurks<br>
underneath. A silver boat can split this<br>
seam of water: even gone muddy, gone<br>
untold for so long. Disasters rise and stay<br>
like high water marks in the unconscious<br>
and each day after is checked against it.<br>
<i>What do we have to fear? The worst already<br>
happened, couldn’t happen again.<br>
<br>
</i>But the river, like a muscular animal,<br>
overtakes the banks, chews up asphalt, rises<br>
more to fill stores and homes. Until<br>
the whole Russian River Valley is filled<br>
with her muddy, pulsing body<br>
regardless of what history you remember.<br><br></span></div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-77982993773344196892014-10-08T10:04:00.000-04:002014-10-08T10:04:29.769-04:00The Laguna continued - The Nature of a Place<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For this week's poem, we were supposed to try and write a New Yorker poem. We listened to <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/introducing-the-new-yorkers-poetry-podcast" target="_blank">the Poetry Podcasts</a> and the buttery, smooth voice of Paul Muldoon introducing and speaking with such great poets as Sharon Olds and Phillip Levine. I tried, but, I didn't write much of a New Yorker poem. Instead, I went back to the Laguna series and wrote about egrets. I was inspired by the stories I'd read about the inception of the Audubon Society and how their first work was to save the egrets in the early 1900s. I hope you enjoy this draft. I think the Laguna series is close to being done. Just two or three more poem-sections to complete the cycle (I think!).<br />
<br />
<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Nature of a Place<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">"The
nature of the place—whether high or low, moist or dry, whether sloping north or
south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs—generally gives hint as to its
inhabitants." --John James Audubon<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Today, on the Laguna, one can still<br />
see the shock of a white, plumed body mark<br />
the space between a raw, golden field, and<br />
the open question of sky because<br />
somehow, the Great Egret, the Snowy Egret<br />
and the Cattle Egret all survived their beauty. <br />
<br />
By late the eighteen hundreds the Laguna was<br />
the heart of the Bay Area plume trade.<br />
During breeding season when egrets grew<br />
aigrettes, a waterfall of long thin feathers<br />
cascading off their backs, hunters would raid<br />
the giant stick nests built high in the air<br />
in the eaves of oaks and willows to get<br />
$32 –double the price of gold--<br />
for an ounce of feathers used on women’s<br />
fashionable hats. Spotting an egret<br />
became more and more rare until a man<br />
who had spent his life watching birds, nest, and<br />
eat and rise to flight, who had sat all day,<br />
knee deep in brackish mud, and drawn what he<br />
saw so vividly that it came to life,<br />
was honored with the Audubon society<br />
which was formed to eradicate plume hunting.<br />
<br />
By the 1920s the egrets had<br />
begun to return. But, the nature of<br />
the place – the lack of steelhead and salmon<br />
that swim in the deep, unseen waters, the felled<br />
oaks and cleared willows, the waters gone thick<br />
with sediment – tell the story of its<br />
inhabitants. When you walk smooth paths<br />
of the Laguna today and sight the<br />
white arrow of an egret remember<br />
the quiet, unforeseen hunt that continues<br />
and still threatens his beauty today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-9726349783213965972014-09-30T00:00:00.001-04:002014-09-30T00:00:46.599-04:00The Laguna, Part 8 - The Impaired<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Here is the latest installment on my Laguna poem: section 8.It is still very much a draft, but thought I would post it anyway to keep myself going.<br />
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This </span><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">14-mile</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> wetland, t</span><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">his 254-square mile</span> watershed that’s s<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">pread between four cities where history’s left over sediments
are still being removed. </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">By 1990, 92% of the Laguna’s riparian forest was gone.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
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Left arm reaching into Copeland, Washoe and Blucher Creeks. Right arm
reaching into Santa Rosa, Hinebaugh and Five Creeks.A mouth that breathes
into Mark West Springs Creek.A backbone made of the <span style="background: white;">Mayacamas</span> and Sonoma Mountains. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />In summer months, the Laguna wastes into a silver </span><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">ribbon of water threaded between hills.<br />
In winter months she spills and swells back into what she once was: a series of lakes that lead to
the sea. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />Considered a national treasure. Listed as impaired </span><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #252525; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">under the federal<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Clean Water Act</span><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> for </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">sediment, nitrogen, temperature, phosphorus,
mercury and dissolved oxygen. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Which system is miraculous? </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"> </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">The plentiful before or the rescue of what’s left after? </span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When you walk the smooth, grated paths that now rib the Laguna, h</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 16px;">ear a thousand oak leaves rustling in the light wind. and </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;">remember the miraculous ghost of
what was once there. </span></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-84188585188071917822014-09-26T17:30:00.001-04:002014-09-26T17:30:24.482-04:00Laguna Part 3 - A Double Sonnet on The Llano de Santa Rosa<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlWYCKvixjOAHRkTjcBbxhNvKZcTwsg9jYZXoMf9JNSMWEFMOwD6REicCLw6V860zNQUtFwbHuIDrdPKQDCGNK5nA2tI21olNSIg1vLSbgIvBaRIlv9qJKfy2en8_INDcnjj9Lg/s1600/survey+of+rancho+de+santa+rosa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlWYCKvixjOAHRkTjcBbxhNvKZcTwsg9jYZXoMf9JNSMWEFMOwD6REicCLw6V860zNQUtFwbHuIDrdPKQDCGNK5nA2tI21olNSIg1vLSbgIvBaRIlv9qJKfy2en8_INDcnjj9Lg/s1600/survey+of+rancho+de+santa+rosa.jpg" height="170" width="200" /></a></div>
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Here is another draft of a section from Laguna de Santa Rosa. This one, a double-American sonnet focuses on the first land grant to Joaquin Carillo (son of Maria Carrillo and brother-in-law of General Vallejo) called Llano de Santa Rosa Rancho. The map pictured here is from <a href="http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/" target="_blank">Calispehere</a> - an amazing resource for historic photographs and documents. This is a survey map of the Llano de Santa Rosa Rancho (which did run out near what is now Llano road). </div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><b>Llano de Santa Rosa Rancho, 1843</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Joaquin Carrillo was granted three <br />
leagues of forested delta or <i>llano</i> <br />
thanks to his brother-in-law, General <br />
Vallejo. Soon, acres of oak forests <br />
that seemed to breathe light into dark were gone. <br />
Land cleared. Lakes drained. Crops replaced sedge with corn, <br />
wheat, and barley. Trees were burned for charcoal. <br />
An adobe home was built near Analy township.<br />
But even as the trees thinned the plain still <br />
teemed with large game: great herds of elk forged lakes, <br />
mountain lions paced their territories<br />
and grizzly bears roamed at will. One
day when <br />
Joaquin rode across the eastern edge <br />
of his rancho, one such bear followed him.<br />
<br />
His horse, wild with fear, stumbled into<br />
one of the many sink holes that had opened <br />
up from the changed land and it was in that <br />
dark hole that the three tangled into a story.<br />
From which a bear would emerge unharmed.<br />
From which the man and his horse would follow<br />
what dark commerce was executed to <br />
obtain this outcome is unknowable.<br />
<br />
When settlers arrived after the Gold Rush,<br />
Carillo began to sell off pieces <br />
of his land. Farmlets of 100 or <br />
so acres of hops or cattle. Trading<br />
post went up. Whatever was in the way – <br />
water, or animal, decimated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-37772089157347183042014-09-23T01:27:00.001-04:002014-09-23T01:27:11.909-04:00Canvas - A Prelude - The beginning of the Laguna de Santa Rosa poem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I guess you could say I am obsessed with finishing this poem about the Laguna de Santa Rosa. But, it is slow work. This week we were to write a poem called "Canvas" in response to <a href="http://bostonreview.net/blog/2014-poetry-contest-winner-francine-j-harris" target="_blank">a stunning poem by francine j. harris called "Canvas"</a>. Here is the re-written opening section of my poem, tentatively called "Canvas - A Prelude".<br />
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />Canvas - A Prelude<br /></span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Begin by walking the cracked,
chamomile- paths. Let the path stretch across
a wide stubbed field. <br />
Fill the air with the sounds of birds. Fill the air with fat bees and the
machine hum of insects. <br />
Post appropriate markers that mark miles and decades but not the truth..<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Try to contain the fissures of time in each quick step. When you
walk under the lone oak that still, like the last visible star, constellates
the field, smell smoke. See the ghosts
of the hundreds of other thick oak trunks that once crowded this space. Hear their lost leaves rattling in the wind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When you reach the man-made lake made to replace the natural
lake, walk the perimeter. The cattails
that cage the floating bodies of seven white pelicans who have stopped here to
rest on route back to the sea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Look out across the drought dry field and imagine an chain of
hundreds of lakes linking their way back to the sea. Drain them for the good soil underneath. Fill
them with soot. Fill them again with feces
and urine. Cover what’s left of them in
brambles. Get tangled in the sticky blood of berry juice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And when you near the last of the water, the floating pontoon
bridge, and the sounds of children playing baseball on the chalked diamond, let
a red-snake T-bone the trail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Let it open in you a wound that at it’s center is a mouth.</span></div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-67564595453359649182014-09-15T18:06:00.000-04:002014-09-15T18:06:10.988-04:00The Laguna poem - Revised and Expanded<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixN54lC2W92IfMgZRmsF8Ja_UXa1cqjpLn3rRnp6vQkPLeGB1V9j_9l42x2PUAkkliewvc32WYqlhioXgDr9zA3052eehvI77AzKdCz9ppEExp-aF7P7n4fgMUph5cVrXGVUaPjw/s1600/whale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixN54lC2W92IfMgZRmsF8Ja_UXa1cqjpLn3rRnp6vQkPLeGB1V9j_9l42x2PUAkkliewvc32WYqlhioXgDr9zA3052eehvI77AzKdCz9ppEExp-aF7P7n4fgMUph5cVrXGVUaPjw/s1600/whale.jpg" height="98" width="200" /></a></div>
In honor of my friend Paula Koneazny, I'm continuing work on <a href="http://momma-phd.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-longish-poem-on-laguna-de-santa-rosa.html" target="_blank">a long poem I am writing about The Laguna de Santa Rosa</a> which she had greatly helped me on. There is still much work to be done on the poem, but here is the draft of a new section I've written to add to it today:<br />
<br /><br />
<strong>Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America, 1874</strong><br />
<br />
The whaling captain Charles Scammon left<br />the ragged, rocky cliffs of Maine's coast for<br />San Francisco in 1849. He led many whaling expeditions<br />But what those large bodies lent instead of<br />flesh and oil was a path to a luminously blue,<br /> Baja Lagoon where the whales stilled their bodies<br />to give birth. The first day he arrived<br />at the open-mouthed bay his heart shifted:<br />a locked wooden chest left open and bare.<br />He learned to observe for a different<br />purpose: not to hunt, but to know<br />what the dark bodies could spell into him.<br />When he left that unpredictable sea to write<br />it all down he settled with his son on the edge<br />of the Laguna where the sea still speaks<br />in susurrations of muted fog.<br /> </div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-41954814621897580982014-09-08T21:08:00.001-04:002014-09-08T21:08:18.342-04:00Emily Dickinson Mash-up<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For today's exercise we were to write like the first poet who influenced us. Quite humbling, to say the least! My first poet-love was Emily Dickinson. I started reading her in 7th grade. Here is my attempt at a draft:<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Emily
Dickinson Mash-up<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That leaden hour when morning fog will block <br />the automatic warmth of a robotic sun. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A wire caught – nosed and laced through <br />
air’s translucent ribbons – writhes and snakes<br />
<br />
until the dawn is stuck to brood in <br />
the zero hour. Too much for the swallows<br />
<br />
tired throats to attest. A golden
pressure<br />
that winks against the barrier of glass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">What keeps me in, waiting –<br />
for the lift, the dry field, <br />
day purged of fertility of night.<br />
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-10131566485231006142014-09-02T23:50:00.003-04:002014-09-02T23:50:31.262-04:00Mean Mommy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After a few weeks off getting the semester started, I've finally drafted a poem (YAHOO!) <br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";">Mean Mommy<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";">You wake to the
liquid dark. You wake to <br />
the new container of your elastic<br />
body. You wake to cold sweats, small femurs,
<br />
and wrist bones fossilized into your flesh.<br />
You wake to shadows breathing in corners <br />
of what could come what could enter and take <br />
away what you love. Days slur
drunkenly <br />
by --fat with syrup and homemade pancakes <br />
(<i>FROM SCRATCH!</i>). Days made of: diapers and wipes and <br />
mismatched brittle laundry. There
are days when <br />
you look head on at your face in the mirror. <br />
When you can see through your elastic skin <br />
into what’s underneath: geometry <br />
of bones and at its center a hearth of rage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif";">You wake to the
dark empty before dawn. <br />
You wake to the slit of night light. You
wake <br />
into the new routine of meal to meal. <br />
The bend down and pick up the wrapper on <br />
the floor, check the laundry on the way out.<br />
Some mornings you wake before the others. <br />
You open the door into the yawn of <br />
dawn into the deafening chorus of <br />
sea birds and raptors and blue jays into <br />
the air that is fresh and possible with <br />
fog and you feel the perimeter <br />
of your own body return to you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">But footsteps THUD!
into closer into </span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">
the open belly of the house. And night </span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">
slurs into the noise of day. The stuffing </span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">
of bodies into clothes and the packing </span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">
of (</span><i><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">NUTRITIOUS!</span></i><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">) lunches. These days when you </span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">
look head on at your face in the mirror </span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">
and see beyond the bone cage, the raging</span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">
belly hearth to the bedrock beneath:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"> a mountain lake gone slack and
cool. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">
A lake that burns with its origin of ice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-63561143461085560412014-07-29T15:19:00.002-04:002014-07-29T15:20:15.149-04:00Into the Hybrid at Luther Burbank's Garden<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'm working at <a href="http://www.napawritersconference.org/" target="_blank">Napa Valley Writers' Conference</a> this week, which means in between helping to run this incredible conference I get to sit down and hear poets like Brenda Hillman, Kazim Ali, Camille Dungy and Brian Teare blow my mind with craft talks about various topics. This draft of a poem happened while listening to Brenda Hillman discuss the various types of courage it takes to engage in the poetic space. It's a meditation on Luther Burbank's Garden in Santa Rosa and the way we hold history to a specific line, even though it is all subjective. <br />
<br /><br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Into the Hybrid at Luther Burbank's Garden<br /></strong><br />
<br />
Mounds of earth like open graves<br />
grammared by stones, guarded by toothy daisies.<br /><br />
<br />
The medicinal garden, the sensory garden<br />
the garden of starts and failures contained.<br /><br />
<br />
To question history is to watch the chaos of its particles<br />
glisten into discernible patterns in the air.<br /><br />
<br />
We loosen embedded stones with our toes<br />
amongst tree that grow into each other.<br /><br />
<br />
<br />
We ask--<em>where is he buried?</em><br />
Light caught in the fingers of lost cedar.<br /><br />
<br />
<br />
We ask--<em>where are the unattested species recorded?</em>Indecipherable writing in notebooks<br />
sketches of leaves, a seed big as a child's fist.<br /><br />
<br />
<br />
Please do not record <em>inside</em>Please do not disturb <em>outside: </em>the<em> </em>war of air.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />What's pushing up-- <br />
ache of earth against this litany of breeding air:<br />
mind to mouth to mind to mouth.<br /><br />
<br />
<br />
This breeding between what was, what will be,<br />
and what will be left to believe.</div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-55280377474386191062014-07-17T18:52:00.004-04:002014-07-17T18:52:40.513-04:00Prayers for Arborglyphs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">For this week's prompt we were supposed to write a prayer for something. I've been grading creative nonfiction essays all day and one image has been revisiting me -- the image of an arboglyph: an old aspen tree that's been carved into over and over for decades we see each time our family hikes from the valley to the high camp at Squaw Valley. My students have been writing incredible essays and all day I've had to hold myself back from writing. So the tree stuck in my mind. It stuck there as I drove the boys to the dentist, or as I drove by myself in the car listening to a man on the radio talk about his journey raising his autistic son. And when I finally sat down I knew why that <span style="color: #444444;">was speaking to me and my family about: it was the long journey we've just traveled. The metaphorical wilderness we've found our way out of. Here is my draft. </span></span></div>
<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Prayer
for Arboglyphs<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">“the
Basque sheepherder humanizes an otherwise unrelentingly pristine natural
environment. Thus, whether wandering through an aspen grove or contemplating a
stone monument he enjoys a certain illusion of not being alone. Rather, despite
his solitude a man can commune with the ghosts of past generations and enjoy
some small sense of purpose as he leaves his own mark as a legacy for future
herders.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">— William A. Douglass,
Basque Sheepherders of the American West (63)<br /></span></i><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The trail rises from the valley—vein to <br />
sky—sometimes granite bedded, sometimes hushed<br />
by pine needles. When we walk it, we walk<br />
for hours. We try to remember each <br />
turn, each nook. Try to find the
unmarked way. <br />
<i>Blue skies bury us in expectations. </i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
The creek that threads us up waxes and wanes <br />
between full bellied summer and the ice<br />
of holding its breath. There are days when we <br />
walk through the pygmy pines, wind whispering <br />
like the waves of a lost sea. We giggle <br />
like dryads. Other days the jagged maw <br />
of granite islands swallow us whole<br />
until we can no longer find each other, our way.<br />
<i>Echoes that bend our voices apart.</i><br />
<br />
We aren’t the first to want to annotate<br />
this passage of wilderness no matter how <br />
steep it has become. Half way up, black scar
<br />
of Arboglyph screams from the curved belly <br />
of an aspen tree that we aren’t first, or alone. <br />
<i>God bless the tree that remembers the
wound written into the wound.<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So that when we return to
the level <br />
valley floor we hold that carved wilderness <br />
in us—static whisper of aspen leaves, <br />
the course we found, the hope like a hawks scream <br />
that pierced us until we carried on.</span></span></div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-85738189950007142682014-07-02T15:28:00.002-04:002014-07-02T15:28:42.203-04:00Dear Sebastopol -<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been working on finishing a new manuscript called, "There's a Ghost in This Machine of Air" which focuses on the history of Sebastopol. For our assignment this week, we were asked to revise a poem and change the "you" who is being addressed. I did revise this poem, but when I tried to shift the "you" away from Sebastopol, I lost the heart of what I was trying to do. So, I switched it back. (The mural pictured here is the actual WPA era mural that is still in our post office and that I refer to in the poem.) Here is my revised poem.<br />
<br />
<h2 style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; text-align: left;">
Dear Sebastopol –</h2>
<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: arial;">
<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Hard not to get dizzy, here, under tides of scent—<i>how they grade and terrace the air</i>:<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">salt thick tang of wet earth fat with limestone against sweet rot of wind falls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><br />Pine sap town built on stolen ground. Wagon rutted streets. Hills once lush<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">with redwood and oak, cleared to the root for embroidery of orchards.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Century-wide berths of scrub oaks smoldering in the Laguna.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">A train that carried its screaming weight down main street.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">But the WPA mural on the post office wall still frames:<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">the hard won promise of rows of apple trees flanked by white chicken coops.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Once your accepted story swallowed me under its bell glass sky.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Now, I wake slowly. Learn to waver in the air above what history </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">we've</span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"> learned</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">sense what’s pushing up underneath.</span></div>
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Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18407609.post-73078425598063612272014-06-23T19:59:00.001-04:002014-06-23T19:59:31.751-04:00School of the Dead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For this week's prompt, we were to write a faux translation. I stated with Vallejo and somehow ended with Helene Cixous <i>Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. </i>This is one of those haunting books, we have the privilege to read just a few times in our lives. I first read Cixous when I was on the precipice of becoming a writer. Or of listening to myself enough to realize I wasn't going to be anything but a writer. Reading her again today, is both haunting and luxurious. Here is my attempt at faux translating Cixous:<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">School of the Dead<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">A passage way between two jagged shores </span></span><br /><i style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">Dark water is dark because it holds more<br />oxygen </i><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">There are two ways to clamber </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">downward: plunge deep in</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">to earth or forgive your air to the sea. </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">They say truth is down below with the dead </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">– weighed down by what </span></span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">we've</span></span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"> let ourselves forget.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">We are a storm of living particles –<br />fireflies that aim to light dead static<br />of air. So when the ash falls it is<br />deafening. <i>To be human, you must first<br />lose your world.</i> The way the sea will wash </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.399999618530273px;">you out of stance and breath. The unknown waits.</span> </div>
Iris Jamahl Dunklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16544029652465263295noreply@blogger.com0