"subject line"

Tiziana La Melia is a Vancouver-based visual artist who writes poems, some of which are about, amongst other things, haircuts, make-up and clothes; some of which can be found here.

This Friday an exhibition of La Melia's work and the work of Chief Beau Dick, Dan Graham and Jeremy Shaw will open at Macaulay & Co Fine Art, under the title Altered States.

The poem below is, amongst other things, La Melia's response to Ezra Pound's "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" (1917).


subject line
/.


the first major

line i stole in my

20s was from

ezra pound

who translated the line

from a chinese poet

Li Po


a line about a hairstyle

graphically producing a line


the line along the forehead

of a girl


i took this being unformed

and ill formed

and emotionally ill


those were forming years i

can't undo, i try


the line was something like

i cut my hair straight across my forehead


in the original poem, his

and his

and mine


about some girl

bent over

working.


i picture her grey-blue dress

something a mennonite might

wear, but without the gathering

below the waist


an identity crisis

again and cut

my bangs again.


i look like an

earlier self,

i do not mind.