STEADY, MY GAZE: The Poetic World of Marie-Elizabeth Mali
Reviewed by Grady Harp

Marie-Elizabeth Mali has the ability to bear her soul to the reader while at the same time tempering the explosions that frequently lift off the pages of this book of her poems so that by poem’s end there is present a mollifying platform for recovery – before she surges forth with another flight of words into thoughts, into emotions.  Where she has been and what she has experienced remains at a mysterious distance?  Several of her poems suggest time spent in Venezuela and her use of the Spanish language seems almost innate, yet during some of her escapades with nature’s mountains and rivers she reminds us that she is a blonde Swedish gringa under the guidance of stalwart river guides.  How many husbands have there been? Multiple, or is this the poetic license of a spirit who knows more about relationships than we?

Mali takes us through a meditation experience and finds comparisons of the disappearing fears she encounters not unlike her perception of her marriage.  She ably mixes philosophy and religions and memories with bullet holes of rape and death and earthy reconstructions of events most would avoid.  And somewhere in all of this mixture of poems is a glimpse of Marie-Elizabeth Mali, striking out at intruders who would discourage her participation in life at its fullest. She is able to look at the ambiguities of living and settle them into moments of observed agony and passion and fling them back at us, daring us to participate in her sorcery.

QUINCEAÑERA

What I wanted most was to look
like the other girls – flawless
false lashes, gold eye shadow, red
lips, dark wavy hair and tropical
curve-hugging dresses. But my top
was a silver puff-sleeved silk thing
over a long black taffeta skirt,
my sharp Swedish cheekbones set off
by a ballerina bun wound tight,
My quinceañera in Caracas
and I looked like a Garbo Barbie.

They swarmed together abuzz
with the criss-crossed dating scene
of Caracas teendom as I hovered
at the edge of the hive. What I wanted
was to be one of the 300 girls invited
who already knew the 300 boys. Not the one
paraded onto the dance floor and twirled
by my Papi to That Girl.

I wanted the boys to want me
in that Roman Catholic way – virginal,
unattainable – instead of expecting
blow jobs in the bathroom.
I hung back near the parents and watched
the Caraqueñas, so like the dolls
in New York I would adorn in bright dresses
and make speak in Spanish, Swedish, and English,
hoping, by some miracle, they’d understand
one another and love me back.

Or as in later poems she muses about the present, about having been through years of marriage, having lived through experiences of both exalted highs and painful lows, Mali is still able to put pieces of time together masterfully, metaphysically as in the following poem:

NEPENTHE

I want to say that after we got off the phone,

I stood up and went into my husband’s office

and fucked him there on the floor.

Instead, I sat and thought of you and Jonathan

a month ago walking across wet grass,

arm in arm, into our home -

you in orange with tight striped pants,

your silver hair loose, his blue,

blue eyes and turquoise shirt.

We snapped your photo on the deck.

How many things do we do each day

without knowing it’s the last time?

In the middle of the night, my husband

woke me up with his desire, the moon

a streak across the bed, and I opened, finding

my need to drink that dark, scant opiate.

And in other moments she can approach the concept of loss and death in words few of us can find to mold those sacred memories, words in a poem that bring a strange awareness of how to deal with the finality of time as in the following poem:

ELEGY

I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time

with your body.  I’m sorry not to have stripped

and washed you myself, not to have oiled

your sunken face and chest, your flat feet,

your swelled belly and catheterized penis

before you went off to the crematorium.

I had but a few minutes to hold your hand,

with the crooked middle finger I share, and feel

the air, no longer passing through you, shimmer.

Two large men marched in, bundled you

in a bag.  They carried you out, handing me

the navy silk pajamas I gave you for your last birthday.

Damn efficiency.  You whisked out on a stretcher,

me left pressing your pajamas to my face.

Marie-Elizabeth Mali is bold about life, bold about death, bold about passion and exhilaration, and even bolder in calling our attention to this time we call our lives. She writes these poems simply, yet eloquently, serving them to us as communion, Eucharist, or some other extension of grace.  Without a written resume she allows us to know as much as is necessary from a very womanly shaman.