~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Featured Poet • Kendall Dunkelberg

Kendall Dunkelberg directs the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing and the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium at Mississippi University for Women, where he is also the chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy. He is editor of Poetry South and the founding advisor for Ponder Review. He has published three collections of poetry, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures, as well as a collection of translated poems by the Belgian poet Paul Snoek: Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus and the creative writing textbook, A Writer’s Craft: Multi-genre Creative Writing. His poems and translations have appeared in many journals over more than thirty years, including recently, Delta Poetry Review, Oyez Review, Tar River Poetry, Valley Voices, Juke Joint, and About Place. He is currently at work on his fourth poetry collection, Tree Fall with Birdsong. His musings about poetry, food, teaching, and technology can be found at kendalldunkelberg.com.

Black Racer

I still remember coming home to find him

stretched out, lying across our brick steps,

a black snake as long as my leg. I had seen

snakes, even had a run-in with a rattler,

sunning on some rocks in New Mexico,

lethargic enough to ignore our dog and only flick

his tail, once we were safely away. I'd been stung,

I thought by wasps, in a tall Missouri prairie,

then driven to Texas where my new landlady

pronounced "snakebite" and prescribed Benedryl

when she saw my grapefruit-sized ankle.

So I kept a healthy distance between me

and this king of the ground, though he didn't look

like any venomous creature I could identify,

yet was no common garter snake either.

He must have heard my footfall, for soon,

he slithered into our bushes, under the house,

or back into his hole. Later, I read he was more

of a danger to rats and mice than to humans

and I was glad we had shared a summer morning.

I've never seen another black racer in our yard,

though if he lives under our porch, I don’t mind;

he can have his home and maybe keep rodents away.

I've seen other large snakes on the road or on the path

by the river. I give them a wide berth to pay my respects

to a life that seems both alien and familiar, a life at home

both on and under the ground, not so much deadly

as familiar in the land of the dead, perhaps a messenger

or a reminder that there are limits to our human experience.

Note: “Black Racer” was previously published in Valley Voices.

Stereoscopic

Earth and sky, mud and water,

blood and breath whirl and swirl.

Here there is primordial ooze

and futuristic sun spot static,

damp canyons and dry arroyos,

hurricanes of magical dust.

Here the eye is a schizophrenic

calm, paradox of paradise in a

dream landscape. Where are

Dali’s melting clocks, dripping,

dripping with their semblance

of distorted order? Here the surreal

is natural, normalized, comforting,

yet disturbing. In this stereoscopic

vision there is no more status quo.

Gilgamesh

Grief is a cold dark country,

whose residents are clad in feathers,

whose songs stick in the mouth

like mud and straw drying

in black sun to make bricks.

Here there are no distinctions:

status is leveled, no one holds

power, everyone is masked

and quarantined. Here,

people are no longer people,

but foreigners among their own

tribe. Time is irrelevant until

one day you wake to the normal

morning sounds: A dove outside

your window, a car driving by.

Inanna

A flurry of cedar waxwings reveals the mulberry,

its lush fruit nearly ready to ripen into deep, royal

purple. The swallows have returned under the bridges,

crisscrossing air, chasing one another, rebuilding nests,

as one lone drake flies overhead, straight as an arrow.

Choose your goddess: Inanna, Ishtar, Persephone, Astarte.

See her finishing her trek from the underworld, where she

has been replaced by her lover or her mother has bartered

for her release. Look, the fleabane and wood sorrel signal

her return. The tree canopy is again replete with green,

and the heaviest late winter storms have passed us by.

Yes, there may still be summer hail, even hurricanes.

Yes, we know winter’s dark looms just over the horizon.

For now, rejoice in the soft song of her familiar doves.

Rejoice with her bees as they collect sweet nectar.