Poetry: Selections from Mary Ann Dimand

Bogey

I know why that woman yells

from the gutter. When she spoke low,

they wouldn’t hear her. In order’s

jail, she wore a blue suit bound

by a frilled white tielet,

and went unseen. Now

her gallimaufry of layers swirls

like rainbow tentacles. No wonder

she rolls those bundles of dank rag

with her, caged inside her cart.

She’s choosing her work—

guarding what’s hers. 

“You’re so lucky,” they used to crow,

patting her head and picking her pocket.

“So lucky,” as they loaded her with minor tasks,

“so ungrateful,” every time

they pressed her down. No one 

pats that crusted hair. The dirty ice

is better than those busy fingers.

Foundations

I like to see the undersides

of things, the seams that hold

the whole together and take

the strain. The staff who clear

away the dunes of trash, who move

the steady trains of food and clothes

along, who cool the brows and mop

the vomit. The space beneath

the house, the pipes that give

it breath and light and spit, and all the earth

informing them. Slumbering cicadas nursing

at the roots of trees, waiting to stitch

the earth to air. Mycelium

whispering tree to tree, passing

along gossip and fruiting the soil.

 

All the maps we’ve ripped

between the nations, sewn

again with trade and treaties,

every treaty dirty, every treaty worn

yet sounder than the snatchings

that tear more wounds. Busy as needles

that stitch though more ponderous,

trucks lumber steadily from port and depot,

gathering shores, pleating nations

to trade’s tidy waistband. Now here

on the seamy side of town, in warehouses

rest the goods that come and goods

that go. Quiet. Waiting. Amid

the metal sheds, a hummingbird trills, screaming

“Boundaries!” from beyond its own.

A Journal of the Plague Years

Now that so many buttocks

have floundered their way to beds,

dwindled behind hospital curtains, or anchored

whole bodies in boxes underground, the chairs

are free. I have seen them wandered

to the tops of kiosks, resting

by a trailhead they must have ambled,

showboating in city squares,

on welcome signs. I never saw

the spindle-legged ones giraffing

gingerly through shadows,

nor a busy rolling of casters

as brisk office chairs attack

their fitness goals. (Ah, to see the armchairs

wallow deep in meadow flowers!) Where else,

I wonder, might our lifted weight relieve

a groaning world? Will the spotted owl

rebound to snack on voles, the snail darter’s paths

stretch longer as the concrete crumbles,

earth spring back and throw the acid cement

from soil and its long-blocked exhalation?

Sisyphus’ Cheat

It’s true. To you who watch, I push futility

uphill each day. The wakes of furrow

cumulate to grab my sandal edges, but

each day I start that boulder from its pad of moss

beside the river. Daily, I set my shoulders

and my heels, sigh, breathe, crouch, and lean,

and push to heave. No lie—I used

to think that nothing changed

for all my sweat. I tried to pay no mind,

no soul, but only body, to think

of sunshine or fresh connivance, though all thought

was flattened on the stone or underfoot.

I thought of thinking how to plan some snare, some artifice

to bag the god who trapped me. Futile. The boulder

scraped me raw, flayed the angry tatters of my fame.

 

Yet day by day my proud flesh tempered, thickened. Wounds

transformed to strength against that stone. I looked

for signs that I could gnaw that gneiss as it carved me. I could—

I saw the polish slowly smoothing

wrinkled stone, shallowing deep cracks. I fancied

that I felt the long, low croon of acid sweat

beneath my noisy breath, my grunt, singing

as it licked the stone it thawed. And then I saw

the rock. Its rippled bands of dark and light,

stone ocean caught by time. And then I knew—

 

we are making something together, stone

and I. I don’t know what. Too soon

to tell what we’ll become as work sculpts

us, wears and pares our schist, brings to light

what’s underlain our heavy lives. Yes, every day.

We are long art, boulder and I, stone and sculptor,

learning what’s inside.

The World Turned Upside Down

    A fish was caught on camera attacking and eating a baby bird.

                  CBC Radio, February 15th, 2021

 

The sturdy mummichog has turned the tables,

bringing sea against the watchful sky. Why

should water lie prone, encumbered, supporting airs

and trees and things with legs? Why when waves

have swamped the nest should fish

not rend a chick to meat and gulp it down? Shores

are weakening and storms are freed. Tall, unrooted

towers that called the skies their kin

are hollowed, softening and surrendering

their living treasures. Eager earth, hungry

tides embrace the lives that overlooked them.

 

Small barons of the markets wane and lords devour

them, but all works are mortal, and the order

changes. The torrents turn where no corner

has been, new songs drown out the old

refrains, and pearls once clutched infuse young wines.

 

May currents take the frames that are exhausted,  

regardless of their gilt or luster, and may floods

bring in what’s live and changing, hungry

and yet enduring, to build strong foundation

for more life to come. May fish be fed

and found new grazing, birds be spurred to sing

in flight to higher grounds.

Mary Ann Dimand was born in Southern Illinois where Union North met Confederate South, and her work is shaped by kinships and conflicts: economics and theology, farming and feminism and history. Dimand holds an MA in economics from Carleton University, an MPhil from Yale University, and an MDiv from Iliff School of Theology. Some of her previous publication credits include: The History of Game Theory Volume I: From the Beginnings to 1945; The Foundations of Game Theory; and Women of Value: Feminist Essays on the History of Women in Economics, among others. Her work is published or forthcoming in Agave Magazine, Apricity Magazine, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Bitterzoet Magazine, The Borfski Press, The Broken Plate, Chapter House Journal, Euphony Journal, Faultline, FRiGG Magazine, From Sac, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Hungry Chimera, Isacoustic, The MacGuffin, Mantis, Misfit Magazine, Mount Hope Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, Oddville Press, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Penumbra, Plainsongs, RAW Journal of the Arts, Scarlet Leaf Review, Slab, Sweet Tree Review, THINK: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Essays, Tulane Review, Visitant Lit, and Wrath-Bearing Tree.