edited by Sean Enfield
Today Spiderweb Salon is featuring a great friend and a great poet, Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi, founder of Dark Moon Poetry & Arts. Fatima was slowly drawn into the Spiderweb orbit many years ago when she and courtney marie met at typewriter-heavy poetry event hosted by The Reunion Podcast and Edyka Chilomé in Dallas. The two bonded over a mutual love for typewriters and good poetry, and they have been close poetic companions and collaborators ever since. Fatima has performed with Spiderweb on a number of occasions, from reading love poems at Spiderwed to shouting words of resistance at the Poetry March in 2016, and she will again be performing with us on Valentine’s Day this week as a part of Spiderweb Salon Loves You II.
We are thrilled to bring you her beautiful, concrete poem, “impolite mythology.” Fatima wrote the poem a few years ago and turned it into its current snake shape when she decided to include it in her forthcoming chapbook, Moon Woman. On writing the poem, she says, “I was exhausted from hearing about women being the origin of evil. I imagined Eve’s thoughts. Often women are hated for our strengths. I imagined Eve as confident, fearless, and without remorse.” And that confidence is certainly on display in Fatima’s poem and helps make her biblical re-imagining all the stronger.
“impolite mythology” will be in Moon Woman, one half of the Lorien Prize winning poetry double-chapbook from Thoughtcrime Press (which will also included don't get your hopes up from our very own Courtney Marie!). If you’d like a copy of the chapbook, we strongly encourage you to support the publication via its kickstarter, and while you're there, be sure to check out the video produced by Frank Darko which features two poems from the book.
For a taste of what Moon Woman has to offer, here’s “impolite mythology”...
"impolite mythology" by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
click here for the PDF version
Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi is the founder of Dark Moon Poetry & Arts, a monthly series which spotlights the creative feminine and non-binary energies of North Texas. She can often be found on sidewalks using her typewriter to birth poems for strangers. She has been published in Entropy, The Boiler, Anthropology Now!, Bearing the Mask, and elsewhere. Her work has been featured by WFAA, KERA, the Dallas Morning News, and others. See her work at fatimaayanmalikahirsi.com.
If you’d like to be featured on the site, please use our submission page: https://www.spiderwebsalon.com/submit
Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi | photo by Leah Jones