Marion Deal: One Mask and Then Another
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Source Code for Pretty Girl Working Le Bon Marché Latter Half of 19th Century
Shave stomachs
craft <—> efficiency
water-tight loping
of prose exported shodden
ever-more departmental
I know
the way
of world
woven
I know
the way
of chains
like these
Looms assumed majority
long marching regression
– linear, collective, a model as it ought –
and here I am
all loony to cock trigger of
Roman nose
and call it coinage
You know/are Them
They lope in assaults
Characteristic movement?
Placement of pulmonary deficiencies.
the thrive is “tactics of smelted chancellors”
(&: other breeds of iron)
the supplicate is “to crowd-song”
treat blistered hands:
with one more drop of oil
bought by barricades, segregated lunch break
We t(o/w)o may be set free
and you may call yourself
Messiah albeit localized
consumed anew in the proper spelling
of an even thread
to regulate your language when you request
the shroud made just for you
in a night grown towards tendencies of
Thalia, mass production, female persuasion
A species all its own
it seems
one mask
and then:
another
Marion Deal chases ghosts across the globe: to the mountains of China as a student of kung fu, to Paris to commiserate with what remains of Jim Morrison, soon to a monastery in Nepal and the University of Rochester to unite academia and Buddhist thought in research on the nature of the conscious self. A chapbook of hers, Cool Talks, Dead I Guess, is forthcoming from Bone and Ink Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals such as The Rumpus, The Seventh Quarry (UK), Chaleur Magazine, Dream Pop Journal, and Gravel, among others, and have been nationally recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers and the National YoungArts Foundation. She has performed her work in French, Italian, and English at venues from a Shandong Province mountain range to the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and is a proud poetry whore at Le Bordel de la Poésie.
