Rebecca Dunham Cedar Falls, IA
Rebecca Dunham's first book, The Miniature Room, won the 2006 T.S. Eliot Prize and was recently published by Truman State University Press. She will be joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee this fall.
Jimy Santiago Baca’s comments:
“Mary Wollstonecraft
in Flight scathes the boring intellect with an awareness
and awakening that soars loftily above most poems. It's metered, a choral of
bohemian hobos riding God's train across the landscape of one's fears and
strengths-- quite nice.”
Rebecca Dunham
Mary Wollstonecraft in Flight
--
So many rivers. Blood churning
through the veins, rain’s
roped course down my wet
& unbound hair, the
body below. His forked
voice licked my mortal ears
clean. Men are strange machines.
He kisses like an ancient
God, his spit in my mouth a curse.
I can feel even now the heated
fury of his tongue & lips, how
they molded mine to his
design. The words I speak reduced
to birdsong & beating wing.
Cassandra’s not the only
prophetess. I will not be confined,
content to peacock & preen
my manifold eyes. These storm
soaked skirts will ballast
my fall, plumb as bridge pilings.
I have nothing
to fear from water’s mean slap.
Let my lungs be coin heavy.
Let their two ruched pouches
swell pink & full as I sink, let
& the October wind, my screech.