ADVENT DAY SEVENTEEN: MARIA DAMON

OUR THEME TODAY

Our theme today: Nazism.

April nooses, cruel Hitler cream.

Improvised dressage with a unicorn in jodhpurs.

Today I’m Mother’s-Birthday-fatalistic,

turn on the waterworks, I’m on fire.

Kiss my feet, Hitler youth, in all your streaming

blondness braided

nooselike

a bog-person-to-be 

elaborate stitching and

all that ayahuasca in the 

moors and mosses.

I heard you can fuck yourself

through a crystal straw, though

it’s not important as long as

the single-horned bull plunges

further to the right.  The sa-

cred mysteries of street cred,

plastic money and due props

trine Hitler riding a unicorn,

I meant, riding down Wall 

Street on a moist mollusk

masquerading as a

fat narwhal, sleek as

Diana Nyad.  And 

that’s your card-reading 

for today.

Maria Damon is professor and chair of the Department of Humanities and Media Studies at the Pratt Institute of Art

ADVENT DAY 21 * MARIA DAMON!

TERRA DIVISA/TERRA DIVINA (T/E/A/R)

In 2008 Iain Biggs invited me and others to respond to his book Debatable Lands, Vol.1 (Wild Conversations Press). In that book he told the story of a female bard, Mairi nighean Alisdair Ruaidh who requested that after death she be buried face down, so that her dirt-filled mouth be stopped from uttering wickedness for eternity. A harrowing allegory of female artistry under calamitous geopolitical circumstances, it reminded me of The Scarlet Letter.

For 25 years, MARIA DAMON has provided her expertise to students at the University of Minnesota, where she was a professor of English with affiliations in the departments of American Studies; Gender, Women, and Sexuality; Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature; Theatre Art and Dance; and, the Center for Jewish Studies. Damon received a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University and a B.A. degree from Hampshire College in Humanities and Arts. She currently resides in Brooklyn and is currently Professor and Chair of Humanities and Media Studies at the Pratt Institute.

Curatorial note: The following poems are a response to a call for poetry about 

rape culture for the annual Delirious Advent Feature; the call is in turn an 

immediate response to the Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus” about rape 

culture at the University of Virginia. However, they are also part of a larger 

conversation about rape in poetry communities. Curated by Jessica Smith and 

Susana Gardner.