Daphne's Broken Sonnet

Apples are imagining themselves
onto hillsides – pink petals stick out their
tongues from the dark mouths of branches
and the forest canopy ripens overnight
until it pulses like a green heart. Spring
frankensteins us all—softens our cyborg
brains (Admit it:  you were thinking about what
mysteries your phone will sing out!) While your
body turns like a tree toward the light. Reader,
somedays it's just too much: powder blue sky,
light wind stirring the leaves as if they are
waving, no, beckoning me to root
and join in. How could I not give in? Trying
to find the song that’s buried in the soil.

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Iris Jamahl Dunkle was the 2017-2018 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA. Interrupted Geographies (Trio House Press), is her third collection of poetry. It was featured as the Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection for July 2017. Her other books include: Gold Passage and There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air. Her work has been published in numerous publications including San Francisco Chronicle, Fence, Calyx, Catamaran, Poet’s Market 2013, Women’s Studies, and Chicago Quarterly Review. Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.