Nisa Malli
Nisa Malli is posed towards camera left against a gradient background of very dark green, fading outward into black corners. She is wearing a leopard print shirt and looking towards the camera.
Biography
Nisa Malli is a writer and researcher, born in Winnipeg and currently living in Toronto. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria and has completed residencies at the Banff Centre and Artscape Gibraltar Point. Her first book, Allodynia (Palimpsest Press, 2022), was long-listed for the Pat Lowther Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her chapbook, Remitting (Baseline Press, 2019) won the bpNichol Prize.
Poetics Statement
“Rooted in the indescribability and disembodiment of pain, Nisa Malli’s Allodynia looks outward to space and the future of humankind, as well as inward to the body. In “Pain Log”, a suite of body-horror poems, she explores illness as a haunting or possession: “At home, my stitches / undid themselves, fevers pet me // like a dog, my eyes opened / backwards. Sleep ghosted me // more than usual.” In “Ship’s Log,” a near-future speculative suite of poems, Malli turns to themes of alienness, artificial intelligence, and the impossibility of translation; danger, intimacy, and war; as well as the worlds we choose to build together. Allodynia is a highly anticipated poetic debut that more than fulfills the promise of its author’s bpNichol award winning chapbook Remitting.”
Sample of Poet's Work
Ritual for Removing “Opioid-Seeking” From Your File
Sit sweet-mouthed in the doctor’s office in your best
“Reliable Witness” costume, ghosts braiding your hair. Appear
ill but not in need. Competent but not complicated. Well-
spoken but not too prepared. Memorize side effects. Dress neatly.
Smooth your skirt. Still your face. Controlled
substances means you can’t cry if she says no. Good
girls don’t want it this bad so you don’t tell her
about the haunting. How they find you
crumpled on your own doorstep trying to get your shaking
keys through the door. How they paint you into bed, legs
calved in metal. You don’t tell her about the days spent unhooking
yourself from well-meant prescriptions. But what do you know
better than your own body. Your own
fever. Your own hand on your brow. Your own
stealth. Your own storms. Your own
sorrow. Your own safety. Your own pain. Your own
falls. Your own fault. Your own fault. Your own body
and it’s haunted halls and absentee owner.
Previously published in Allodynia (Palimpsest Press, 2022) and Minola Review
L’Hôpital Notre-Dame
The angels of the triage station know you
are waiting patiently to be admitted
into their sanctum. They won’t judge you for slumping
in the plastic waiting room chairs meant to hold one body
at a time that doesn’t need holding up, for wearing nail polish that dulls
the pulse oximeter suckling your finger, for mispronouncing
the names of your possible causes. Sweet Miracle, they know
you are a medical mystery, permitted to plead
your case here many times over. Ahead of you: an axe-split
kneecap, arrhythmias, the worst half of a bar fight,
food poisoning, a suicide risk, second degree burns.
The waiting room is eternal and atemporal. You have always
been here. They have always been here. Here, everyone is always
in the middle of an emergency, neither dying
nor recovered. The most urgent cases are already inside; the well are well
on their way home. It is daybright, no matter what
time it is. The loved ones are coming or trying to come
or calling the signal-ness phones of the eventual patients. Here,
the doctors are spoken of but never seen, hidden somewhere
behind the ever-swinging doors. Here, the waiting
room occupants are swaddled for warmth
in the hum of hospital machines. Here, the hymns are sung
in sync to chest compressions. Here, the angels move
like refracted light bent between the aisles, floating two inches
off the ground in cloud-like white sneakers.
When asked, report your symptoms as best you can, first
chronologically and again starting with the most believable
problem. Surely, you have told this story before, here
or in an identical room. On a scale of 1-10, how trustworthy are you?
How long can you hold your breath underwater? How often do you leave
your body for other, less contested, haunts? Are you well
in your dreams? With what mouth do you name
these symptoms or whatever brings you here
to Our Lady’s Waiting Room?
Previously published in Allodynia (Palimpsest Press, 2022)
There’s a ban on interspecies contact
but they can’t stop us from dreaming
of a less strict nation. Aren’t we all
Aeolian now anyways?
And I have questions
that can’t be answered by the dead
our biologists bring home. The blood-
deer and slink-toads and wer-
mouths that look nothing
like their namesakes.
All the things that live
unsheltered in the skin-
ripping everwind. Twenty years
to get here and we’re still afraid
to go outside. Our neighbours
leave us sealed
baskets of camelid wool
sandstone casks of night-
rain, constellation maps you can bet
the winds on, like we’re children
pouting in our rooms.
Previously published in Allodynia (Palimpsest Press, 2022)
