Carolyn Dunn's News and Views

My mother, Dora Dunn, died Saturday morning. It was a quick illness preceded by eight years of debilitating Alzheimer's-type dementia. She will be greatly missed (twice now) by those who truly loved and respected her. She was 73 years old.

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Collecting yourself,
the parts long escaped
into the universe---
scattered across the years
distance between two points
of an elongated star.
The hurt that was too much,
caused each tiny piece to fly
away.
Piece by piece by piece
all of the parts of grief
tore apart the fabric
of stars and longing
and your heart
was the first one
to go.
Your soul splintering
like shards of glass
and bone
pierced the sky top
and tore holes
in the night,
singing stars
and longing home.
As you lay here,
on your last breath
of dust and ash.
The pieces of your soul
reconnect,
looming skyward
like lost lovers
Seeing each other.

I imagine it like this:
the explorer,
the artist,
the teacher,
the mother,
the wife,
the daughter,
the lover
each star collected
in dappled light over
green hills you always wanted
to go.
Those pieces,
eyes shining,
the light catches
across the sky
and I am left
looking up like a child lost
and finding a map
of the way home.
I have missed you
for so long
but go now, fly home
by pinpoint faraway lights,
stars maps
to the next world.

to all the Indian fybread girlz...

When I was in fourth grade, we made missions. I mean, we didn’t build them out or bricks and mortar, just Styrofoam and toothpicks. You can by the sets at any crafts store these days. Once, I stood outside Michael’s with a sign. It said, “California Missions is a synonym for genocide”.They called the cops one me and I just screamed, “little Hitlers!” as they shoved me into the back of the car. It was first attempt at peaceful civil disobedience. I became educated about the real mission behind the missions. Convert is really kill. Indio means in God… in Deo, I would smile, we are all children of God, whether light or dark, and besides. California Indians don’t have as much sun as you do, so we’re not as baked. And the ancestors would laugh, and hug me, and sing even louder, and that love would swell within my heart to where I thought it would burst. And it did when they were murdered.

But then, I was an obedient little lamb. Now, I’d make a mission with sand covering Indian bones and slave chains.