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The Meter Reader: Lisa Dordal's听Mosaic of the Dark "arrives at peace and knowledge"听

Nina Murray

搁别惫颈别飞别诲:听Mosaic of the Dark听by Lisa Dordal (Black Lawrence Press, 2018).

Like the houseflies in the book's final poem, whose 鈥渆yes鈥�/their thousands and thousands of eyes鈥�/make a mosaic of the dark,鈥� the speaker in this book beholds a soul鈥攈er own鈥攖hat has spent long stretches of time unlit and fragmented. Apropos is Rumi's advice听not听to be like the rider who gallops all night and never sees the horse that is beneath him. In the case of听Mosaic of the Dark, 鈥渢he horse鈥� is the speaker鈥檚 quest, not for answers, nor clarity, exactly, but for a more honest engagement with a god/religion that recognizes her queerness and identity as a woman. In Lisa Dordal鈥檚 poems, the speaker鈥檚 ride through the darkness does not deliver a dazzling dawn of spiritual or any other kind of certainty, however; it arrives, instead, at peace and self-knowledge, the speaker's sibylline dream of a cave, 鈥淸d]ear/god-shaped hole.鈥�

The opening poem, 鈥淐ommemoration,鈥� recalls the speaker as a twelve-year-old in her star turn as Mary in the Christmas pageant. She is riding a real donkey, who requires handling by an older, male child:

听鈥� I don't remember

his name or if I even knew it

at the time. Just that I couldn't look at him.

A visiting (male) poet, in the second iteration of the scene, advises, 鈥淭he boy is important <...> The center of the poem.鈥� (Would it be a spoiler if I told you, on the balance of the book, he is most certainly not?) And so the tale unfolds, haunted by the boy leading the donkey and Judith Butler's voice saying, in a cameo,听If God is male, then male is god.听This, in fact, is Dordal's quest and subject in this book: if God is that which is looked at, and the female/queer self is invisible, is there a God that is alive, aflame, and relevant to such a self? And, at the same time, if God is that which cannot be faced directly, and the world refuses to face the homosexuality of the self, isn't that very obscurity, that lacuna the 鈥渄ear god-shaped hole鈥�?

The record of the soul's evolution, and its engagement with spirituality, that Dordal unveils is ossified, sometimes reconstructed鈥攊t is a delicate job, 鈥渜uiet,/brainy labor: reading the ash/in Nile River mud.鈥� There is her speaker's alcoholic, ill, and later dead mother. There's her father, who is both knowing and oblivious鈥攁 perfect foil for the brilliantly recollected young person's turmoil of despair and innocence (and thus a suicide attempt involving aspirin). There are years of 鈥渢aking in air,/quietly as a spider/entering a room.鈥� And in 鈥淭estament,鈥� half-way through the book, when the voice speaking to听惭辞蝉补颈肠鈥檚听reader suddenly knows鈥攁nd claims鈥攊ts power, it states: 鈥淚 don't know if memory/is a place or a map of the place.鈥� The declared uncertainty of this statement belies the power of its insight: if memory is a map, someone is responsible for having drawn it, and the reader can begin to contemplate what it means for a female/queer memory to be a map drawn by others.

A reader can be forgiven if, having arrived at Dordal's speaker's restless, oneiric visions in the final section of this remarkable book, he/she wishes for more conclusive revelation or a more certain arrival. Instead, as in 鈥�2. Omniscience, Prayer, Pantheon,鈥�

A woman dreams <鈥�>

As her god becomes

the quarrel, becomes

confusion and descent.

The final vision of Dordal鈥檚 speaker may be fragmented into thousands of luminous or liminal insights, but the triumph has already happened. It is in the two poems about the speaker's relationships with young inmates at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. 鈥淭his/eye, this wisp of seeing/and being seen鈥� must serve, she learns, as the sliver of the divine鈥攚hich she contains and delivers to the young men who have been denied, as she was in her doubt, the grace of self-knowledge.