Mari Deweese (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: "Diz/zy” Mari Deweese creates the various and sundry in Memphis, TN. Her first three books are published or upcoming by Nixes Mate, and she is currently consolidating the next two, as well as recording her poetry-turned-music under the project name diMzy.

Three Diwalis Ago 

On this eve of light

explosions of triumph

disturb and disrupt

Once I was disrupted

twice disturbed, now

I only see in the dark

A memory of black

eyes alive as memories

recalled ignites curious

festivities. But from one

hemisphere to another

a year murders the last

and days are sand

that made lovely

patterns on the tile

like us, exploding

circles, sparks, burning

out, becoming ash.

Letter for the Unrisen Sun 

Perhaps I should have written before this moment,

but, I confess, I had no interest. There is all

together

too much

noise.

To whom it may concern is a queer way

of addressing oneself but if

the apron fits

I tie it securely

round and round me.

Barefoot I lay claim to only my soles

and only when dead skin has removed

any trace of former softness. I love

these callouses,

these useful pads,

these unseen grips-

f**k me

if I ever forget to tread

on asphalt in August, you’ll know

I wasn’t in my left mind.

This isn’t a found poem

but the printout of my vitals

at the nurse station

is.

Parathas on Black Lake

  

I wanted to scrape

every bit of the rust-

coloured stain off

the bottom of that skillet more than

almost

anything. What I wanted more

was to take it with me

when I left, and to place it,

and a dozen green bottles

and a box of lit matches

in a kitchen that does not exist

and to sit, with my tea,

in my stockings,

and watch you flip something else

with such deft skill, watch it land,

toasted

and hot, blistered, in the bottom

of that pan that I wish

I could have

kept and I could not,

all that discoloration

left for another hand

to try to clean, another

one to watch with less

wistfulness than I over the cooking

of an early morning

after-screw snack, wanting

to keep the residue

of this memory for long,

long after the soap

bubbles settled and the crumbs

dissolved in a dark

grey

mush down the trap

Setu, April 2020