Brief Lesson in Marriage (Lesson 2), and: Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung

Abstract

Brief Lesson in Marriage (Lesson 2), and: Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung Iris Jamahl Dunkle (bio) Brief Lesson in Marriage (Lesson 2) We were living in the time of extinction. Feathered bodies aloft— Shadows tattooed across the river's throat in the violenceof where it meets the sea. This is before you became a cyborg. Your human heart still felt warmunder my good ear when I slept. We woke to the sea and the ash had dispersed. Have you ever seen one you asked We were screwing back on our legs and arms in the dawn light.Finding our everyday bodies. And you know to answer no even thoughyour dreams had been heavy with the bodies of whales Their migration tethering you out— Because something in you had rooted, brackish. [End Page 10] Instead of the cross, the Albatross about my neck was hung Had we believed in omens, had we knownthe way the albatross would stretch overthe cool deep that had seeped into the poolsthat kept the thrashing reptiles of our minds sated. On deck, the bird stood ten, perhaps twelve feet,wings, a muscular arc. What filled my headwas my cavernous room still being builtat Wolf House in Glen Ellen—how the birdcould have soared between thick knuckled rafters.How I wanted to kill it and did. HowI brought it back. Then, months later, when startledawake by Eliza's screams, by the lowmoan of loss from Jack, I looked out at the ridge where are our home had once stood, saw itstoking like the heart of the mountain crackedopen—I remembered that bird, saw its ghostfly out from the smoke. [End Page 11] Iris Jamahl Dunkle Iris Jamahl Dunkle was the 2017-2018 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA. Her poetry collections include Interrupted Geographies (Trio House Press, 2017), Gold Passage (Trio House Press, 2013), and There's a Ghost in this Machine of Air (Word Tech, 2015). Her biography on Charmian London, Jack London's wife will be published by University of Oklahoma Press in 2020. Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers' Conference. Copyright © 2020 Pleiades and Pleiades Press