Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton is an award-winning author of Black Chameleon (Henry Holt, 2023) and Newsworthy (Bloomsday Literary, 2019), as well as a lauded playwright, director, performer, and critic.
Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton is an award-winning author, playwright, director, performer, critic, and the first Black Poet Laureate of Houston, TX. Praised by the NY Times as an artist who “defies categorization”, her genre-bending works span from stage to page. She is the author of Newsworthy (Bloomsday Literary, 2019) which was translated into German (Berichtenswert, Elif Verlag, 2020), Black Chameleon (Henry Holt, 2023), and an upcoming children's book, Hush Hush Hurricane (Kokila Books, 2025). Honored as part of Houston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 class, she has been a contributing writer for Glamour, Texas Monthly, Muzzle, and ESPN's Andscape, to name a few.
She’s penned stage works including Marian's Song (Houston Grand Opera), Atlanta: 1906 (Atlanta Opera) & On My Mind (Opera Theater St. Louis). Serving as Playwright/Director, she produced The World's Intermission, commissioned by Performing Arts Houston (Jones Hall), which was adapted for film, and Plumshuga: The Rise of Lauren Anderson, a choreopoem (Stages Theater) which made the cover of the NYT Culture section.
Her recent memoir, Black Chameleon, which was awarded Best Nonfiction Book award by the Texas Institute of Letters (2024), examines Black womanhood through afrofuturistic mythology. Stories that Mouton later adapted into a storybook opera (Lula, the Mighty Griot, HGO) and an independent short film (Headache & Heartthrob). A former Resident Artist with the American Lyric Theater, Rice University, and the Houston Museum of African American Culture, her upcoming projects will debut at The Kennedy Center and American Lyric Theater. She resides in Houston, TX.
On the Eve of Winter
My father,
the one in my dreams,
is always a big man.
Shoulders, rocky mountain wide
round bellied and towering.
He is never frail or slipping
His heart never forgets its own metronome
He hasn't learned to vanish
into thin skin and sunken chest
He is larger than life, always.
Moving about this world-a towering bear
who means no harm
but wandered into the campsite of your heart
to find food,
Made a delightful mess of everything.
He is one day away from hibernation
We don't know it.
He gathers moments
to store for the winter
Smiles to hold him over
when the nights cool
And his body hunches
in the dark to rest.
He will take everything with him.
He will leave nothing behind
but a footprint
wide enough it cannot be filled
Deep enough it cannot be missed.
My father is too grand to miss.
Afterlife
And then there was the silence.
The deafening firmament
That said you were gone
Without a mumbling word.
The void where all the squeezing hands
And mouthing prayers
Whirled into a black hole
And we leaned in,
Begging to go with you
But not wanting to leave.
Us, too human to ascend.
You, too holy to stay.
Found
Less than a year after the last dragon's attack, the Lie-catcher finds me: a tiny hatchling licking my wounds in the corner of the gymnasium floor. He is so full of light that he attracts moths. I sit, drugged the way only a doctor could concoct, reimagining the invasion in the window. I’m a recent hire. Left my last job after calling out from the emergency room yielded a questioning of my dedication to my students. My arms tangled in bruises where nurses had used every vein to try to force me to blend out. I wear long sleeves in summer, hiss when approached. He asks me to lunch. So many times. I oblige. We take to the nearby Randall’s where the soup is served hot and the oyster crackers come free. We wander the aisles like it’s Gethsemane. He shows me nothing new, but it all feels like harvest. Then, the dull ache. The one that says my wounds are still open. And he is close enough to see them. I know what is next. All of the ways this will go wrong. I double over on the floor of the freezer section. Curl my tail. Play dead like a fetal flower full of lies. He sits beside me, in this winter, ushering onlookers along. Plucking each lie from the air like a boy who knows how to pull the wings off of a mosquito mid flight. He says it is okay to sit here however long we must. So we shift well against the ground until I run out of ways to make myself invisible or scare him away. Then He says, he sees how big I can be. And he is not afraid.
Corvus Come Calling
I loved a crow once. The kind that only comes around when other relationships are on the verge of expiring. He met me when I was young and unsure. Still finding my voice on the mic. Approached me after the open mic. Offered to let me take him home. I had no room to house such an intrusive thing. But he hung around. Stuck close to my friends. Made himself more… domestic. Shea butter on his feathers, cowries in his dreads. Before long, I could hardly recognize his carnivorousness. Flew away without warning like something about loving me was too alive to enjoy.
Returned my way at a competition a few years later. Flew right into the hotel that I was calling home for a few days. Perched on the bench next to me. I tried to ignore him, but by now he was so familiar he didn’t seem threatening. He inched closer. Dare I say, I wanted him to. By now, he was magnetic, like his beak was neodymium and he was drawing all the blood iron in the room into a crowd. A “veteran poet” they called him. A line stretched before him to ask sage advice, the ways of words, how to circle success. He seemed to have all of the answers. I was enraptured by his ability to speak to the hearts of man. I guess once you have picked them apart enough times, you know what they need inside. I was just about to leave when he perched on my shoulder. As if to say, the line didn’t matter; that I was all he wanted to focus on. So I stayed. Lord, how I stayed.
He rode my shoulder to dinner once the line before him was a barren field. Sat across from me picking all the bacon bits out of a salad, like we both didn’t know he wanted more. He made me laugh my guard down. Then, he asked again to spend the night. This time, at his place. I didn’t know what it all meant. I assumed he wanted plumage all over the floor. Our blacks to collide. But I was less interested in finding out how much bird I was. More interested in watching the yellow in his eyes dance across my body with pristine focus. But we both got what we wanted, sort of. I watched his eyes turn my body golden in the moonlight, and he got a taste for flesh. No more than a morsel. But I must be honest to say I wanted to be more filling. When the sun met us, I gathered my belongings and we kissed goodbye.
I made my way to breakfast with friends. We laughed and talked and I didn’t mention my night spent on the floor mattress with the crow. But then, another group joined ours. Familiar women, but not friends. And they talked about their sloppy evenings full of libations and reckless behavior. And they binged laughter and purged juicy stories; ones most women wouldn’t share in unrelated company. And they talked and they let their tongues dance across the names of so many men I thought they held libraries in their throats. And then one said, she met a crow. Same one as me, two nights before. How he ate until he was full. She vomited all of the details onto my cinnamon french toast and it stuck in the maple syrup. That I had been a body, laying in the road to him, and oh how he had feasted. How he had feasted indeed.
I told myself I would never let the crow close to me again. But loneliness has a way of festering long after its expiration date. Before I knew it, I was motel deep in a Ten Gallon Town and he was staying in a room just beneath me. I would see him inching out to the community pool. His full plumage folding over his swim trunks, He pretended not to notice me. Let out a deep caw cloaked as laughter and then cut his glassy eyes in my direction. Cawed again, calling me over. I ignored it the first time. Even the second, but when he showed up at the second night of competition, I wondered how he had found a restaurant that would let him linger. He stayed close to the front window, picking grubs from the ears of the younger performers. Sounding sage and harmless. But we both knew how devastating he could be.
Still, there was something about the shine of his feathers. How he smelled of shea butter and loc oil. How he would flutter so close, you remembered what it was like to be part of his mouth. He hovered around me all night, until he caught me outside, where no one was looking. He invited me back to his room. Promised he wouldn’t scare easy. I declined. But I knew it was only a matter of time before he would cast that caw up at my balcony and I would come running. Just like the dead inside always do.
THE INTERVIEW
This interview was conducted between Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton and Jae Nichelle on 6/4/24.
The first poem you shared here is so full of this strong, comforting father. What would you say you’ve learned from your family that you keep with you today?
My family has always made me believe that all of my weird and creative tendencies were by design. As a unit, we were always a herd of black sheep. My mother and father both prioritized history and storytelling along with art. I believe that's why my brother and I are both artists.
My father, especially, made it a point to praise me for all the things he felt others would tease me for. My big feet, my round hips, my inability to be quiet… they were his favorite things about me because they were unique. He wanted me to feel like God made me with intention- both of my parents did. And I still carry that with me until this day.
Thank you for sharing “Corvus Come Calling.” It has me thinking about a tangential question that I feel applies to so many Black women writers. How do you care for yourself when writing or researching difficult, sometimes traumatic subject matter?
I actually wrote this piece in the thrust of writing my book Black Chameleon, but it didn't make it in for a lot of reasons. Writing can be cathartic, but sharing can take a toll. I believe that just because I write something down doesn't mean it has to be shared. Shared work is for the things I feel comfortable discussing in detail and allowing to be a communal moment, but the art of writing has been my sanctuary. I think a lot of writers forget that we didn't become writers for an audience. We did it to escape. We wrote to build ourselves a new world to exist in, the same way we read. Maintaining the sacrament of writing is crucial. Deciding when to share should be part of the healing process you set out to do with a larger community.
As a big fan of Write About Now, I loved discovering your poems online from Texas Grand Slam 2016. Do you have a favorite moment from your time competing in poetry slams that have stuck with you? Would you ever return to the competition space?
My first individual slam was the Women of the World Poetry Slam in 2008. I had been on a few teams, including the college invitational team at the University of Michigan. I remember getting ready for Final Stage and feeling wildly overwhelmed. I was standing in the lobby of the hotel when one of my fellow finalists, Sonia Renee Taylor or Sha'condria "Icon" Sibley I believe, walked up to me and asked what I was going to perform. I was too much of a competitor to tell them. But then, they invited me to a hotel room to practice. The room was full of a handful of finalists for that year, most who happened to be Black women. Most of them I had adored on stage for years. They all shared their poems and started giving each other feedback. I was baffled and intrigued. Then, I shared the poems that I planned to compete with and they helped me shape them and gave me tips. I remember Sonia saying to me that "we work together to give the audience a good show." Somehow it was not about the competition anymore, but about the sisterhood. I never imagined that was possible in a competitive space. It shifted the way I understood community and relationships with my fellow performers. And so many of those women I am still friends with and root for even if we don't share the same zip code.
As far as slam, I will never say never. Slam was a proving ground. It taught me how to engage an audience; how to thread an image with precision. What I learned in those seedy bars and cafe patios altered who I am as an artist, and simultaneously, that space feels less like my own now. It is ever-evolving like I am. And while I won't write it off, I'm having so much fun creating work in the arenas that I am in that I am not in a rush to run back.
In what ways do you feel your performance background has contributed to your skill as a librettist?
BREVITY. Working in opera is so much about minimum words for maximum impact. Being a poet has definitely helped in this arena. I also think I am a natural storyteller. Even my poetry sets as a performer had a through-line and a story arc. Thinking about the journey I am taking the audience on and who I want them to be when they arrive, is at the core of what makes me a great librettist. Writing for the stage is a little bit of puppet mastering. You have to consider what your audience is feeling at all times. The same thing is true for a performer.
In a Canvas Rebel interview, you talk about moving to Houston even though you knew no one there and had no job to stabilize you. By sticking it out, you eventually became the 2017 Houston Poet Laureate, started your own business, published books, and so much more! What has been the most surprising arc of your literary journey?
Can I say all of it? I don't know that I ever knew that the world would open to me this way. I just wanted to make space for other writers, to tell my little stories, and to not starve doing it. But so much more than that has materialized. I never thought that I would live through one of the largest hurricanes to hit Texas, or that being the Poet Laureate would mean I had to respond to BBC World News in a poem about the damage. I never thought that poem would go viral or that someone would see it and want me to write an opera. I never thought I would write poems for the Houston Rockets or perform on the 50-yard line of the Texans stadium for 37,000+ people or on stage with the Houston Ballet. I never thought I would be remembered as a writer. And while I am not a household name… yet, I see the impact. I am eternally grateful to God for trusting me to hold so many stories. I am humbled every time I lose everything and have to rebuild (Which I wish I could say happened only once). I am surprised that my children talk about me with so much pride because I belong to them. And I think my ability to stay present and keep being surprised keeps me grateful.
If someone offered you a million dollars to sing a song on the spot without messing up any of the lyrics, what song would you sing?
I have so much wasted mental space that holds nothing but 90s hip-hop and R&B that my husband makes fun of me. I think it would either be Regulators by Warren G and Nate Dogg or Belle's opening sequence from the animated Beauty and the Beast film (Don't judge me I'm eclectic lol).
In your conversation about writing Black Women’s Mythology published in the New American Studies Journal, you said about your memoir, Black Chameleon, that “Naming particular stories contributes to their mythical status by helping them linger.” What’s the name of a story or myth that you’ll never forget?
If it's one I crafted, I would say The Women Who Are Blind, which is the opening myth in the book. It chronicles how Black women go eyes in the back of their heads. It was my first foray into myth writing and it opened me up to an entire world. However, that myth wouldn't be possible without Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly. My mother bought me that book when I was young. It was the first time I saw Black folks with perceived superpowers and much of my myth grew from hers. She mentioned that some stayed behind after the people flew back to Africa. I remember asking, what happened to them? Who's telling their stories? Much of that was the early seeds for Black Chameleon.
What’s something you feel you can only get in Houston?
The food. Houston is the culinary capital of the south. I think it may be the only place you can get crawfish eggrolls, handmade churros, and Nigerian curry less than a block from each other. I love a lot of things about Houston, but when I leave, I instantly miss all of my favorite restaurants.
How can people support you right now?
I am currently working on an interactive exhibit entitled "Call Me Mother" that shines a light on the Black maternal Health Crisis. I am raising money to fund the art, pay artists fees for my seven collaborators, and connect with local organizations doing advocacy work. I would love it if people could donate or at least spread the word. They can find out more at my website www.Livelifedeep.com/callmemother.
I am also premiering a new opera next June at the Chicago Opera Theater entitled "She Who Dared," composed by Jasmine Arielle Barnes. It chronicles the impact of the historic women behind the Montgomery bus boycott. I would love to see folks in the audience.
Lastly, just follow me on IG @livelifedeep. I love to stay connected to dope people.
Name another Black woman writer people should follow.
Vogue Robinson. She was the former Poet Laureate of Clark County, Nevada. She is an amazing painter and poet and more folks should know about her.
###
Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.
Comentários