Sponging step to step
through the green snaking paths of the bog,
dead wood jutted, gnarled and knotted,
from the stagnant water pools
like the arms of the drowning dead.

I was sixteen, and still trying
to learn the foreign country
of my body and mind.
I did not yet speak the language.

My host father guided me
through the museum slowly,
letting me translate each posted sign,
take in the sweet, dusty aroma
of ancient rotting wood
from the salvaged Viking ships.

In the final room, the bog people lay,
each showcased in a viewable coffin display.
She was not yet seventeen
when she’d been made to swallow stones
and thrown in—
this skeleton strung with leather strips,
and a shock of red corn husk hair.
It wasn’t all of her—
the bog she’s been thrown into still
held the remains of her form.

How odd it must of felt
to be flung into all the fear: the sinking,
one arm reaching for the knotted surface
and instead becoming the trees.

When we left the museum,
my host father pressed
a silver jewelry box into my palm.
Inside its tight mouth shone
the broad-brass cross
of Thor’s hammer. It’s for good luck,
he said nodding, as the skies
cracked their jaw to rain.

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Iris Jamahl Dunkle received her M.F.A. from New York University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Case Western Reserve University. Her work has appeared in many print and online journals including Cleveland in Prose and Poetry, Fence, Squaw Valley Review, and Washington Square. She's been teaching creative writing in both University and community environments for the past nine years.
 

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summer 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue