2 Poems
By Marilyn Dumont
Art by Michelle Campos Castillo
Text me
I wanna find one link oudda here one, tough text-warp one sharp weft-text
Oh! I’ve thread the eyes of so many loopholes, eyelets, eyes of needles, thread
needles of so many eyes lines, syllable-thread
bind cloth cut text thread needles feed, feet of thread
sewn in this text, tireless text type
text type textile thread, read: type or imprint
Don’t fab-fake the context
cuz fashion will wear yur ass
con /text, don’t break
those silky threads
fibers that ar-ti-cu-late, send shivers
sew and send me
those text messages, those “tweets”
give me text, baby
the tac-tile kind,
give me tweets
give me text, baby
and AR TI CU LATE
or am I
just not
your
type
the silk fineline kind
form or fashion
fibre-type
Brand
You
Just take the strongest storyline oudda here
cuz it’s all about tension
the greatest weight the threads will bear
Cane scent
he was a beauty
barely there
as if ashen hair & hazel eyes
had been washed a 1000 times
and now, all that was left
was sparkle
the grey flannel of him, leaning out
from a packed Jazz club
my eyes, crossing the sidewalk
following the seam
the length of him
from polished heel to up-turned
trench-coat collar
who wouldn’t have been drawn
to his body’s breeze of grey-gauze
humming near
anyone looking
would’ve have sensed
his hue, his season
the wisteria of him
❀
Metis poet, writer, and Professor Marilyn Dumont teaches for the faculties of Arts and Native Studies at the University of Alberta and is proud of Metis family lines from her mother’s—Vaness / Dufresne families and her father’s—Boudreau/Dumont families. She was awarded the 2018 Lifetime Membership from the League of Canadian Poets for her contributions to poetry in Canada. In 2019, she received the University of Alberta Distinguished Alumni Award and the Alberta Lieutenant Governor’s Distinguished Artist Award, and in 2022 was awarded the Alberta Queen’s Platinum Jubilee medal for public service. Her four collections of poetry have won provincial or national awards: A Really Good Brown Girl (1996); green girl dreams Mountains (2001); that tongued belonging (2007); The Pemmican Eaters (2015). A fifth collection surrounding the Indigenous history of Edmonton, called South Side of a Kinless River will be published by Brick Books in 2024.