Divination
Marita Dachsel
$5
I can see you.
Can you see me?
In the mirror, you don’t see how you really look, you see how you want to look.
No way, you’re saying. You’re saying you know all your faults. You wish you didn’t
have them. You look in the mirror and you see your drooping eye or the weird shaped mole or how your nose is too big or too small or too flat or too pointed. The only person who ever liked her nose was Anne of Green Gables.
But all those faults you see, only you are seeing them. They are yours. You’re projecting. Most people can’t see them at all.
And don’t call them faults.
If I were your auntie, I’d remind you that they are signs of character.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Marita Dachsel is the author of the poetry collections There Are Not Enough Sad Songs, Glossolalia, and All Things Said & Done. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry, and the ReLit Award. Her play Initiation Trilogy was nominated for both a Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script and The Critics’ Choice Innovation Award. She has created interactive poetry-based installations for festivals and conferences in Victoria, Edmonton, and Toronto. She lives with her family on Lekwungen territory in Victoria, British Columbia where she teaches in UVic’s Writing Department and knits on the sly at any opportunity.
This is Dachsel’s second above/ground press title, after learning to breathe (1996). A third is forthcoming.
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