You don’t know what memory is until you lose some small diamonds falling. One moment you’re fully awake, brain doused in hot dark blue dye eyes open as wounds watch shut faces of white coats surround you, sheets on an unmade bed.
Nobody tells you when you can’t see out of one eye and your speech is more Alaga syrup on a raw biscuit than a voice
that when you finally go to sleep in intensive care
some un-god in new suede shoes will come a thief snatch pieces you’ve lived.
Mary Weems
Dr. Mary Weems is a poet, playwright, imagination-intellect theorist, social/cultural foundations scholar, and former Poet Laureate of Cleveland Heights. Dr. Weems is the author of thirteen books including Blackeyed: Plays and Monologues and Writings of Healing and Resistance: Empathy and the Imagination-Intellect, and five chapbooks, most notably white (Wick Chapbook) and Tampon Saw Class (Pavement Saw Press). Two of her books are full collections of poetry: An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles (Bottom Dog Press) and For(e)closure (Main Street Rag Press), both finalists for Ohioana Book awards. Weems was the recipient of the 2015 Cleveland Arts Prize Emerging Artist Award in Literature. Dr. Weems may be reached at maryeweems.org.
