Deirdre Maultsaid

Single White Female Seeks Same

I am featured on a plinth of marble:
glass blown, my own technique, bold swirls of purple.
Says the inscription, wreathed around the bubble
“lay down your life for a friend in trouble.”
No.
I only make beauty. I entitle.
I demand moral unity for this social circle.
What I know, its patterns, must be universal.
I deny The Poor their grenades, leave them in the rubble.
I am blind to gendered rage, chains, girdles.
The panic romance is girl duty, churches.
I make art, real trouble.
If I let too much light in, I will burn up, the death knell.
I put my hands up, still.
I let some the light in; it bows and arcs; I am so vital.





Deirdre Maultsaid has been published in The Barcelona Review, Canadian Women’s Studies, Canthius, CV2, the Danforth Review, Other Voices, Pif, Prairie Fire, the Puritan, and others. Her essay, “The sun knows what it does” appeared in the anthology, Double Lives (McGill-Queens University Press) She is a queer writer living in Vancouver, Canada. Twitter her @deirdmaultsaid