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Desi Di Nardo
Desi's work was also performed at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa for International Women's Day. Her poems were featured in Poetry on the Way on the Toronto Transit Commission, on the Parliamentary Poet Laureate "Poems of the Week", and in the Feminist Caucus 25th Anniversary Anthology. She is also included in the University of Toronto 's Library of Canadian Poets. Her poetry has been presented in English classes in high schools and at the University of Toronto . Desi’s poetry is presently being showcased at Grassroots in Toronto for National Poetry Month in April. Her writing has been translated and published for literary and cultural journals in Iran. She occasionally conducts poetry workshops in schools. Desi has previously worked as an on-air entertainment host/writer and English professor. To see more of her work visit her website: www.desidinardo.com Curiosity is Female
The last thing you want is to write about the same things as last year or to think about the person you used to dream about twenty years ago when modernity had already begun [to suck you deep into a gopher hole] and whenever it was sunrise, burnt toast was in the air not love, like the songs says and the old man at the end of the block wanted to make it with you for being so beautiful deliciously ripe so you made love in the shack your father built in the yard your pet rabbit thumping at your ears like a starved heartbeat to bite into old skin freckled and weathered by the sun you swim to your mother who hasn’t told you everything keep your mouth fixed hold it until you finish writing wait for it and gasp like it was your first breath Forget You Not
She wants to address you With a word, something with a clean ring to it Not too many syllables One that won’t take all her effort In a way that does not reduce her to a grain of sand again She wants to say volumes To tell you how she doesn’t rest easy in bed That for years she’s walked like an alien Misplaced, lacking the chemical necessary to float Her blood to her veins She wants you to know she still grinds her teeth at night And that she won’t get over you, in spite of yourself Holding the wood lattice to her tiny frame She wants to stay like this, vigilant Waiting for you in the humiliating dark Signaling with her hands A simple sign language To shred your simple name March 8
for one full century it rained and you, with a bag over your gentle head, did not see the drops fall or melt with the ocean but you felt her on your naked feet goading you, teasing you with blades of grass caressing your neck with her mind it was your laugh, your kind, sorrowful laugh she hears now when she spreads out in the sun her guilty face warmed by the southern sun she wonders if you blessed yourself did you say to yourself, “the demons know me, my love, it’s too late now”
shhh below me somewhere sidling stealthily is a small, sullen speck rearranging pictures of me replacing me with shadows perfecting most of my poses slithering, slinking, slowly she is frivolous, and fierce she spies at the window slyly, smugly by herself snooping, staring she is below me sticking to walls singing and smiling consoled by her voice sullying my space with her serpentine presence she will never know she can never be me because way down below me, she doesn't exist
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Desi Di Nardo is a writer/artist in Toronto whose work has been published in numerous journals including the Literary Review of Canada, Descant, The Globe and Mail, Carousel, The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, the National Post, Canadian Woman Studies, Fireweed, Black Bear Review, Lichen, 13th Moon, and Rampike.