Paula Cisewski’s poetry book, The Threatened Everything (Burnside Review Books), is on the smallish size, trim-size-wise.
It fits easily in my small hands and seems to be littered with hearts—although upon closer inspection those hearts are less than sweet. None of that prepares me for the first poem, “The Apocalypse Award Goes To.” Variously, each section of the poem offers, then withdraws the award to:
First, “my newly betrothed and me . . . It was already the apocalypse, and we already felt appropriately minute.”
Next, the award is given to “most grown people,” who are described as “kaleidoscopically unsafe.” Then, the “animal kingdom,” then “doctors who specialize in treating Prolonged Apocalypse Stress Disorder,” so that finally the poem includes everybody. But these are just the bones of the poem; it’s shot through (literally, in one case) with interruptions. This is a poem for this moment, I think—which, given the time invested in writing a poem, revising, getting it into some editor’s hand, pre-production, and publication of a book, shows some strange sort of prescience on the part of the poet. That I should find it in my hands right when I needed it. Because the poet stopped me to say, “For statistically what percent of the parents pushing strollers on this sunny boardwalk have guns tucked away in holsters? For bullets rip through every modern poem, even the ones where shot or gun is not stated explicitly.”
As I was digesting that, thinking of a friend who I recently learned is nearly always packing, who I’ve begun to hug more carefully, the poem clobbered me with, “Another patient in this waiting room switched on the news and I immediately began leaking. Oh, well. It won’t be the first time a poet has leaked through her own poem.” The poem talks about the practice alarm for the apocalypse. It asks, parenthetically, “What if we need the alarm while the practice alarm’s going off?” and later, “(Those sirens are just on TV, aren’t they?)” These are the questions of worriers and I’ve embraced my suppressed worrier-self of late. This poem is the frontispiece for the entire collection—mixing technology and pop-culture references, sly jokes, relatable fears, and the constant sense of unease and disbelief that has come to characterize the current political and cultural moment for many of us. As the poem says of the apocalypse, “It’s a slow burn. Some of us have mothered whole people through it, others have died of old age in it.”
Cisewski’s book thereafter is divided into three sections: Field Guide to Austerity and Surroundings; The Wolf/Cave Problem; The Laughing Club. In the second section, twins are everywhere. There is a “good one” and a “bad one” and they are the same person, finally. The speaker of the poem “The Good One” is like that soft-sewn children’s toy that has the face of Little Red, and the Wolf, and if you flip it over, also the Grandmother, all in one. After one kills the other waiting for the “old woman” to arrive, she realizes fingerprints differ even on identical twins, so she undertakes to sever hands and sew them on, becoming all one person in one body: “whether or not I had ever been / the good one no longer mattered.” Other imagery from that tale recurs in other poems in this section—the kitchen shears, the animal inside the girl-speaker (like an echo of Carter’s retelling of the tale). All this reminds me of Carol Clover writing of slasher movies, “What makes horror ‘crucial enough to pass along’ is, for critics since Freud, what has made ghost stories and fairy tales crucial enough to pass along: its engagement of repressed fears and desires and its reenactment of the residual conflict surrounding those feelings.”
The final section of The Threatened Everything ends with laughter, a cathartic kind of laughter. It is not joyous, but the kind of laughter that occurs after too much stress, too much pain, when the body and soul is wrung out and doesn’t know what else to do. In the poem “Suddenly Laughter” it’s described as an “intersection / at terror and comfort.” Laughter is a “familiar wrecking ball” that “pummels / your heart’s hollow / business center.” The poem ends with the word “relief,” but we don’t feel any relief. Rather, we’ve decided to laugh, because we don’t know what else to do anymore.
Similarly, in the poem “Humans, Dogs, Apes and Rats” we have a description of rats and the insistence that they laugh. That they have laughed “since before / humans even resembled // ourselves.” Before our culture, or technology, before we gathered to exchange ideas, “or irony, way / before irony.” And then, for those of us uncomfortable with rats, there is the description: “a wriggling pink pile / of bald rodent babies, // the size of several / opposable thumbs.” This is laughter that rings true and unsettles, as many poems in this section ring true and unsettle. Like the poem that includes Obama’s joke about Orange not being the new Black, but of course that’s exactly what happened, and it’s not so funny after all.
But I can’t end on that note, although this was a poetry collection that seemed to meet me where I was, deliver gut-punches I wanted to receive, right in my pale fish-belly. I have to tell you about my favorite poem. In the first section is the amazing “Revolution Prairie” which takes up the imagery of weeds and root systems and limbs and desire.
Consider the right of way of weeds,the root system’s defiant grip,
that they’re only called weeds becausewe didn’t buy them with money
or decide where to plant them.A flowering without
a boss, like our lovepopping up everywhere
(I wish I could read the whole poem aloud to you . . .) Suffice it to say, the weeds burst forth; the poem concedes a mower could cut it all down—the weeds, us, the words that are weeds that burst out of us like sentences of things that need to be said, popping up everywhere. But the poem ends with a call, a promise, and a declarative: “Burst forth with me in this narrow vista / of the threatened everything.”
Portaging celebrates new writing from the Midwest with a particular focus on experimental and hybrid work from small presses.
C. Kubasta writes poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms. She lives, writes, & teaches in Wisconsin. Her most recent books include the poetry collection Of Covenants (Whitepoint Press) and the short story collection Abjectification (Apprentice House). Find her at ckubasta.com and follow her @CKubastathePoet.
In my Survey of British Literature class in college, I remember learning several new words reading Milton.
He’s credited with introducing several words to the English language, but I remember one he didn’t invent: amanuensis, “a literary or artistic assistant, in particular one who takes dictation or copies manuscripts.” The image is familiar – blind Milton, leaning back in his chair, surrounded by his daughters. There’s a painting in the New York Public Library that shows Anne, Mary, and Deborah, each engaged with their father’s work. Milton wrote Paradise Lost, and later works, with the help of a number of amanuenses. His daughters, a nephew, and some people paid to do the work. But I was most interested in his daughters then – and now.
The stories that make up our histories are ever shifting. One story is that the muse would visit Milton during the night, and he’d repeat lines over and over to himself, getting them right, committing them to memory, until someone arrived to write them down. He described his own process in several places. The youngest daughter, Deborah, worked with some biographers later in her life, so some of her impressions may have survived. Other biographers wrote of how the daughters hated their father: his demands, the tasks he set before them, his hypocrisy about the very notion of liberty, his re-marriages, the household where he kept them prisoner. Milton was a man of his time perhaps. Perhaps somewhere between the voice in blind Milton’s head, and the hand that wrote down the lines, some whiff of Anne, Mary, or Deborah survives.
Emily Bowles’s chapbook His Journal, My Stellaexplores a similar situation in some ways. The relationship between Esther Johnson and Jonathan Swift is introduced in a prefatory note to Section I. “Miss” establishes some basic parameters for their relationship. It is a fatherly, mentor relationship. She is eight. He is an “authority.” Later, perhaps, their relationship changes. The poems in Bowles’s collection traverse the grid of this shifting relationship, between powerful established man, and “pliant, pleasurable” Stella – who wants to be seen as “more than a child, better than a woman.” The deftness of these poems is the way they are sketched only, paired with modern-day experiences and relationships, stretched across the negative space of the page, leaving the reader more gaps than knowing. The repetition of “Miss” to signify young unmarried woman/girl, and “miss” to signify something lost, and the line-ending that splits “miss / take” recur over and over to fragment idea and thought and concept. Who can know what happened in Milton’s household? Who can know what was in Stella’s heart? Or Swift’s? The opening note makes clear: “This is and is not something we now refer to as grooming.”
Another classroom wells up at me in the poem “Misogyny in Rabelais.” The speaker has “missed / The Point.” The speaker has gone off topic, writing about something she shouldn’t have, questioning something outside of the poem. This is not an approved topic. “It is not valid,” the “[male] professor” points out. The final stanza of the poem is arranged in opposition to itself, a form that happens again and again here: “you” aligns itself with one margin, but the story occurs on the other margin, in the gutter of the page.
By the end of this poem, the speaker has become fragmented, both second-person (a person to see through) and an “I” still inhabited. She is two-personed, unable to withstand the weight of male authority, but uniquely situated to watch her failure and write it down.
While the story of Stella and Swift forms a framework for Bowles’s collection, the poems aren’t confined by that relationship. Many of the poems don’t reference that relationship explicitly but could be about it. Or not. They navigate the see-saw between specific and universal, but all traverse scaffolds of power, and specifically the power between men and women, that differential in romantic and sexual relationships, in marriage. Each poem calls forth “an act of sexual / textual / violence.” I said the poem “Misogyny in Rabelais” reminded me of a classroom – it does. A graduate school classroom where I asked if we could talk about a poet’s ethics, and the professor said that “wasn’t an interesting question.” An undergraduate classroom where a visiting poet told a round table of eager women poets that “no one wants to read about these things”; he told us, we earnest women-college students at our glossed wood table to “think about your audience.” We had been rapt.
In the article “Experts in the Field” published in Tin House, Bonnie Nadzam writes about abusive men in the writing world – and she touches on exploitive practices and the long-term effects they can have on students’ writing, careers, and voices. Power and authority can have long-reaching effects; power and authority can silence. As mentors, those who seek to harm can control their victims into their future. They are gate-keepers – they control access to jobs, residencies, contracts, networks. Most importantly, they can control access to our very selves, and the way we see ourselves. Through their reputations and classrooms and programs, they can “[teach] the rest of us how we should tell our stories.” In several poems, Bowles gives texts, criticism, judgement literal weight: “I wore the allusions, / those critical garments, / until they didn’t fit anymore.”
Bowles takes on structures beyond the classroom and criticism, exploring marriage and the home. In “Cedar Waxwing in Our House” the speaker finds kinship with a cat, noting the way we choose kitty litter and grain-free food to further divorce the creature from the wild – leaving us all “neutered.”
Domesticity
can feel like a form of
terrorism, and sometimes
a feral urge creeps in
on mouse feet or cedar
wax wings.
There’s that fragmentation again – separating words we expect to see together, perhaps the way the bird’s wings were separated by jaws and claws. In the short poem “I Went Missing,” Bowles makes of words fragments, so they can be read multiple ways. I like to imagine hearing this, as well as reading it, inserting a long pause at the line breaks, giving the page its due.
It was a miss
take
to
take
his name. I went
missing when I
miss
took
my
self
for his Mistress.
Perhaps the speaker of this poem is Stella, perhaps it’s the poet, perhaps it’s any married woman who regrets marrying. Or not regrets entirely, but just wonders about things lost in the joining. Things like names and the identities they signify. I appreciate the slight form, the symmetry of the lines.
The final section of Bowles’ book, Section IV, is titled “Missed.” The note describes how Stella fell ill, died. Swift lived on and mentions of Stella continued. Perhaps she lived on in his fiction, fictionalized. Perhaps she animated Gulliver’s Travels. A poem from this section complains “I am an envelope, sent back and forth / between men . . .” Perhaps whoever survives ensures their version of the story survives, but it isn’t that simple, not between women and men. Not when the context of history has its own rules, in its own places, and one party holds more cards than the others. Not when the negotiations take place behind closed doors in dimly-lit rooms. Witness Deborah, Milton’s surviving daughter, whose voice still wasn’t strong enough to trouble her father’s legacy much.
Portaging celebrates new writing from the Midwest with a particular focus on experimental and hybrid work from small presses.
C. Kubasta writes poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms. She lives, writes, & teaches in Wisconsin. Her most recent books include the poetry collection Of Covenants (Whitepoint Press) and the short story collection Abjectification (Apprentice House). Find her at ckubasta.com and follow her @CKubastathePoet.
When I first read Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, I stopped only twice: once to cry, and once to squeal.
“It’s us,” I texted my significant other, my heart full of love that this existed and rage that I had never seen anything else like it. “It’s a story like ours.”
To say The Argonauts is neatly “about” something would be an oversight of its complicated, intersecting, and messy narrative structure. It is deeply personal yet persistently aware of looming social systems, informal yet theoretical. In just the first paragraph, Nelson references Samuel Beckett, queerness, anal sex, and the unexpected joy of falling into love. This, for me, is its charm. I had been looking for a queer love story that expanded upon rather than simplified what I felt, that unfolded more questions, and The Argonauts became that musing.
I had been looking for a queer love story that expanded upon rather than simplified what I felt, that unfolded more questions, and The Argonauts became that musing.
The love story is that of Nelson herself and her gender-nonconforming partner Harry Dodge. Over the book, we watch Nelson’s body change from pregnancy and Dodge’s from testosterone shots, their stories mirroring and moving between each other. But the love story is also that of myself and the person I was dating when I read The Argonauts, that of a cis woman with her own form of physical dysphoria (in Nelson’s case, maternity; in my own, chronic pain) looking over the wide expanse of what it means to live in a radically changing body while quietly caring for someone who doesn’t fit into a simple gender binary. It’s an homage to the soft moments, the internal struggles, the steps forward—knowledge that can only come from someone living the story.
It’s an homage to the soft moments, the internal struggles, the steps forward—knowledge that can only come from someone living the story.
And there’s a vivid story to be lived and told about building queer and genderqueer relationships. Recently, at the doctor’s office for an annual checkup, I was handed a survey that asked my gender and sexual orientation. The options for gender: male, female, transgender, or other. (There’s much to be said about the separation of “transgender” from the traditionally binary genders in itself, the distinction of “transgender women” and “women” as if distinct categories.) The options for genders you experience attraction towards: male, female, or unsure.
I want to say that I felt furious for all the identities left in the unspoken white space, wrote in “people of all genders,” proved that nonconforming gender and romantic attraction aren’t mutually exclusive. Instead, I felt empty—I already knew this. I already knew how many times I witnessed the small gasp of surprise on someone’s face when I used “they” for my partner, even when that someone already knew I was queer, how many times the obsession with one person’s nonconforming body usurped even the potential of imagining their body intertwined with another.
The obsession with one person’s nonconforming body usurped even the potential of imagining their body intertwined with another.
In the end, I circled only “unsure,” as in not in one defined place, as in fluid, as in genderfluid. And, in coming to the same realization that I had so many times before about our society’s inability to view gender nonconforming individuals as viable romantic partners, I thought of my favorite quote from Nelson: “One may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one’s work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.”
I reread The Argonauts that night, mulling not just over Nelson’s words but others, too. Some reviewers claimed to love the book but rambled on about her lyrical prose and deft handling of motherhood without ever explicitly mentioning gender. Others were more forthright that they thought her subject material was taboo and appalling, railing against a supposed loss of—ironically—family values. Mostly, they reminded me why I needed Nelson’s words: the true bias out there, the anger that emerges when someone simply tells their own truth.
But some reviews were spectacular, embracing Nelson like I did.They furthered her story, uplifted her voice, reminded me that there is and has always been more support than I could see. Black Warrior Review called her “above all… not a hidden principle or a thesis or a construct,” but instead “a living voice,” the face of queer family-making and maturity pulling you by the hand throughout her journey and the hope of your future journey, too. All together, “she takes us in… and she will take you in without questioning why you are there, too.” Because it was never just me in my room alone with The Argonauts. It was never just me alone in this narrative, in this experience, even when it felt that way. There were always more stories out there, more discussion that needed to happen, more people to be taken in. The Argonauts was the catalyst for those accounts to emerge, the one act of representation that lodged the door open and allowed me and others to represent ourselves too, to make ourselves seen to the larger world.
The Argonauts… lodged the door open and allowed me and others to represent ourselves too, to make ourselves seen to the larger world.
And I reread my old writing, my own reviews of Nelson scrawled in the margins. I had filled the book with Post-It notes and underlined phrases and exclamation points, all written to my partner about our experiences together. I don’t know if they ever read the book after I gave it to them and before they gave it back with boxes full of my shirts and other trinkets they no longer wanted around—that wasn’t the point. The point was that it was there for them to read if they did want it, there for me before I even knew it was exactly what I wanted, and there for so many others, a story that resisted expectations and carved a new space for gender nonconformity and romance not just together but as the same entity.
Which is why representation matters so much: it connects us to stories that validate our existence, stories that open new worlds and make them understandable, stories that show us our common humanity and link us together. It proves to us, in Nelson’s words, that “we are for another or by virtue of each other, not in a single instance, but from the start and always.” That we are here, and have always been here, and will always continue to love, despite everything.
The first time I read Lord of the Rings, I was annoyed by the anal description of the Shire and abandoned it.
My mother insisted that this trilogy of books had saved her life, and I just needed to push forward. At the time, I had discovered the magic of reading, but I could not yet comprehend how a fictional world could become your home and give you strength in times of need. I obeyed, but it was mainly to prove her wrong. And then I met Gandalf, and Tom Bombadil, and Aragorn. From the second Aragorn the wanderer came into my life, I felt relieved – he, too, made the choice to be a nomad who explored the Earth, told the truth as it was, protected the defenseless ones, and honored the elders and the traditions. There was such an obvious resemblance between us. As I kept reading, I fell in love with Arwen; I faced the demons of Rohan; with white knuckles, and my heart beating too fast, I entered the cave of ghosts. I helped in all the battles. I broke Eowyn’s heart. And, finally, I built a home.
At the time, I had discovered the magic of reading, but I could not yet comprehend how a fictional world could become your home and give you strength in times of need.
Since then, I have seen many movies making fun of the sensitive nerds who have a hard time at school and take refuge in imaginary worlds. I never identified with those people, and yet, now that I tell this story, I admit that I owe my sanity to fantasy worlds. I remember that my family was puzzled by how often I read Harry Potter; every time a new book of the series came out, I started all over again, from the first volume. So, I have read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone seven times, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets six times, and so on, and so forth. For some reason, I believe that would make J.K. Rowling happy, maybe because it has a sense of magic to it. I would read the adventures of my sister-in-arms Hermione, and her friends, Harry and Ron, while brushing my teeth, walking to school, and also secretly after curfew and early in the morning. With Harry Potter, no matter where I opened any of the books, I was home, and I was safe. I knew the geography of the castle. I studied the main courses of magic by adding up all the information I could find in the novels. I waited for my Hogwarts letter, but never resented not getting it. (Last year, the love of my life had a Hogwarts letter made for me, with my name and my address, and deposited it on my bed – as you may guess, I am marrying him.
I admit that I owe my sanity to fantasy worlds.
Harry Potter changed my relationship to reality and fiction, because it was such a widespread phenomenon that I wasn’t considered a freak for going back in again and again. I could talk to friends about the world and the characters. Practicing spells was a kids’ game. I was allowed to consider the pros and cons of the different modes of transportation – broom, train, flying car, Floo Powder, Thestral. As much as my longing for the Shire and Lothlorien was a shameful secret (I come from a family of intellectuals, and fantasy literature is not favorably looked upon), Hogwarts was instead the first imaginary world I shared with other people. I subscribed to writing forums, where we would create our own character within Hogwarts, and then develop adventures. Real human beings and I were interacting inside my home, and I felt closer to them than to most of my schoolmates. On those forums, I had a voice, a style, a personality. Being a hard-worker, who wrote a lot and with regularity, was appreciated. Being specific about what the tavern looked like, or what the forest smelled like, was rewarded.
My fictional refuge had been somewhat validated, and from there, I braved other worlds and quests. Discovering Eragon was, at first, the secret of the dragon egg in my house, then the guilt and the training with a tough mentor, and finally the transformation from a small life to an international trip across borders. My favorite passage that I kept coming back to was the training of Eragon at the Elves’ domain. He knew much about socializing, fighting, being discreet, negotiating. What he didn’t know yet was connection. Alone, the book in my hands, I craved connection on another level, something profound and true that I didn’t find often amongst my peers. When Eragon was ordered to sit down in silence, to meditate, and to feel the ants walking and working, to listen to all sounds without exception, I felt shivers and shudders. I discovered much later that these messages are repeated by calm voices in guided meditations. For me, though, the spirituality behind Eragon’s new behavior overwhelmed me with hope: it suggested that true magic was attainable through sitting down, and, with discipline and patience, opening yourself up to the world.
I had learnt from Aragorn’s integrity and sense of duty, Hermione’s straightforwardness and perseverance, and Eragon’s curiosity and bravery.
So far, I had learnt from Aragorn’s integrity and sense of duty, Hermione’s straightforwardness and perseverance, and Eragon’s curiosity and bravery. In each of those universes, the rules had been simple – good versus evil. My beliefs were the right ones. I just had to grow enough to share them with others and make them win over darkness.
Then, with Tales of the Otori, everything changed. Suddenly, the hero had a million mentors from different families with extensive backgrounds. Diverse magical powers were born from specific paths. Every quick judgment about a character representing “good” or “evil” was contradicted. I was constantly surprised, shocked, and taught to search for nuances, to look beyond appearances. In a way, all the nuances I had been running away from, all the complications, the grey areas, were coming back in the fictional world. The advantage is that they were explained. I could track down the why and how of my mistakes and the power of my individual choices. When the hero chose wrong, I paled at the harshness of the consequences, and then was captivated by how he rebuilt himself and his environment. I discovered that love and identity were worth fighting for and were a construction that I had to come back to every single day.
Armed with this new wisdom, I finally stumbled into the most magical universe of all: I followed the footsteps of Lyra in Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials. It started innocently enough as a children’s book – we were playing in the mud, defying authority, refusing baths, and asking too many questions. Then, we had a goal: it was good versus evil, and we needed to defeat the sinister Mrs. Coulter, and side with Lord Asriel. At the end of the first book, though, the turn was so violent that I had to read the scenes again and again until agreeing that, yes, Lyra and I had been betrayed. The greater good was presented as more important than the worth of an individual life and that conflict has since then fascinated me.
As we moved into the next volumes of the trilogy, Lyra and I understood the necessity of some sacrifices, but also the slow work of time when it came to forgiveness, studying, and even magic. There was something utterly delicate in how she fell in love and how she learned that a gift can be used in many different ways, and that it is up to us to use our resources in the best way we see fit.
Philip Pullman taught me best what freedom truly means and how it invokes our sense of responsibility. He also showed me the delicate balance between what must be done and what we want to do.
Philip Pullman taught me best what freedom truly means and how it invokes our sense of responsibility. He also showed me the delicate balance between what must be done and what we want to do. I felt bittersweet wonder as I read the last chapter and I have never quite recovered. It has been the most intimate read of my life and I suspect it will always remain the most special universe I have ever visited. It is home, but it is also foreign, because, like reality, everything constantly moves: the borders, the power dynamics, and the people. There is a cycle and a stability with rules that cannot be altered, and there is free will and ethical dilemmas. In this world more than in any other, I had the privilege of learning how reality works – its religions, politics, relationships, and even life and death. In many ways, Philip Pullman became the mentor I had always been longing for.
Every time I walk into a bookstore, I touch the books, read the titles, waiting for one of them to call me. They often do, and every so often, I find new universes where I recognize the streets as if I had explored them by myself in another life.
Now I am twenty-five years old and still looking for answers and ways of looking at our world. Every time I walk into a bookstore, I touch the books, read the titles, waiting for one of them to call me. They often do, and every so often, I find new universes where I recognize the streets as if I had explored them by myself in another life. The last one to date is the gem La Passe-Miroir, a fantasy series by Christelle Dabos, and, amazingly enough, her first published work, where we follow a tough young woman, who can walk through mirrors and read the past of objects by touching them.
All I wish you now is that you find your own worlds and magic, mentors and maps, places where you feel at home, and journeys that teach you new ways to approach reality, with hope, humor, and tenderness.
Reading Sara Ryan’s Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned is like finding poetics, a philosophy, a mini-manifesto.
It’s fitting, too, that the work is described as “hybrid”—as it mixes lineated poetry with prose endnotes that read as a mix of research notes and essay. She blends childhood memories of visiting museums, layering the remembered visions of taxidermied groups of animals with visiting taxidermy shows, excerpts from how-to manuals and articles about the meaning of skins and mounting, with a poetic voice that is quiet (fragments and small i’s) and loud (calling attention to the sheen and color of faux-blood and bright eyes). Altogether, this micro-chap from Porkbelly Press is an examination of the ways we preserve both ourselves and the animals we regularly pretend not to be.
A particularly strong poem is “Bad Hunter,” set at the Taxidermy World Championships in Missouri. The speaker describes women who “flock around like smart pink birds” and “men wearing leaves” who “chew on toothpicks.” The poem continues to contrast these genders: men and women, boys and girls. Judges walk through, taking the measure of all the animals there: “this is how wet the nose should be, this is how / cocked the hoof.” The final lines showcase the juvenile of the species— “a girl dusts paint flecks off her road-kill / beaver. a boy licks a pearl of blood from his thumb.” How color-rich and sensual these details. The reader’s understanding of the poem is only deepened by its accompanying endnote, which describes the gendered divisions in the field—hunting is masculine and so women in taxidermy “encounter sexism and gender stereotyping.” However, the footnote informs us women’s numbers are increasing: “young, academically driven, and largely female.” The endnote concludes with lines that could be back in the poem: “Women in polo shirts. In poodle skirts. In camouflage. Combing dead birds as if they were still chirping.”
Another poem with the (literal) cold-belly moments, the juxtaposition of the sensual and the unsettling, is “Prehistory.” In it, the speaker is discouraged from being an archeologist, but tells how she “identified the difference between / a shoulder blade and a pelvis in middle / school science. I dug into a fetal pig’s / cold belly while a boy pulled my hair.” I am there with her, in the poem, the black lab tables, the chemical smell, the pairing up (of lab partners). At the end of the poem she promises her mother she wouldn’t “dig up bones / for a living” but explains “I only meant the bones / that didn’t belong to me.” The poems are peppered with small moments of memory (a childhood visit to the Field Museum, the middle-school science lab, sitting across the table from “wily foxes on two legs”) that explain the adult intent in looking beneath the seams, sifting through sawdust and glass eyes to discover what the illusion is for— “are we mourners? Are we searching for sweetness?”
I admit it: I’m a sucker for skins, the animals they once were, and the strange things we do to them. I’ve begun my own collection of weird vintage accessories that I wear, often unsettling people I meet. I have the requisite foxes-biting-their-tails stole, complete with claws and glass eyes; a baby alligator purse with the whole small body intact; a skating muff with loose fox tails that waft in a breeze. I keep a small cache of porcupine quills, some blue jay feathers in a box, a raven hairpiece I should probably only wear for costume. As Ryan writes in “Beast Fables,” “we are all animals here” —the speaker goes on to invoke even the tiger mascot on a volleyball jersey as part of this menagerie: “the animal in all / our skins.”
The poem continues, “this is a lesson in fake dead / and real dead. in learning / all the lies.” And here the poem breaks away to an endnote (and this reader along with it), a discussion of an art exhibit with photographs of taxidermied polar bears, accompanied by the bears’ biographies. From an article (cited in the footnote and included in the chap’s bibliography) by Rachel Poliquin, she includes the quotation, “. . . the bears become mysterious and ambiguous objects.” The endnotes are poems in themselves, a treasure trove of ideas to linger over—I found myself reading them as prose poems. They revisit key ideas: when does the animal cease to be animal? (Especially when we invest so much time and effort in re-creating it as if it were still living?) How does the process of turning the animal into a taxidermied object change our relationship and understanding of it? What does this process of “othering” look like? How does it function?
There are small quotes here and there that read to me as a statement of poetics, encapsulated:
“a sharp knife is important—always is.” (from the poem “The Specimen Dealer”)
“Through making things, people make themselves. Without things, we could neither be ourselves nor know ourselves . . . Without things being things, we are just as much human as we are animal” (from endnote 12, paraphrasing Patchett’s “Animal as Object: Taxidermy and the Charting of Afterlives”)
“The various reasons and purposes of preserving animals are ‘underneath and between,’ meaning that they are liminal and surface-level reasons, that cover or make glossy the visceral aspects of human desire . . . to prove something happened” (from endnote 13, referencing Rachel Poliquin)
There is a poem about the literal making of a taxidermied animal, “Of Men & Birds” that takes the reader through the process: “thrust your hook into his pelvis / and suspend him in midair (the better to work with the body) . . . be gentle with his neck (remember he was once other than object) . . . fill him up (a list of suitable materials follows) . . . when you take him home / notice his body (be filled with wonder) . . . you have never seen such a bird, / not even in your dreams.” The poem goes on to ensure that in its instructions for constructing this thing that is both object and subject, both animal and not animal, it shows its once alive-ness, while also showing the care given to the illusion. “he should have a few stitches / at his back, but not too many. / for obvious reasons. // you wouldn’t want him / to look a fool.”
Here, too, I don’t think the poet is talking about taxidermy, or not only. I find this a useful instruction for making a poem or thinking about how a poem could—or should—be made. Work with both hands; disjoint bones carefully; what wings! such feet! he is some good genius! But be sure a few stitches, a few seams (not too many) show, because it shouldn’t be too perfect an approximation of life either, there should be some intimation of a made thing, a thing touched by human hands, a thing that is not fully a recreation. Like taxidermy, a poem is “a dilemma of realism.”
The final poem is entitled “Extinct” and even more than the others in the collection makes use of fragments, half-starts, and dismembered sentences. This is heightened further by its form on the page, two columns that can be read in columns, or across, or both in sequence. The subtle shifts in the poem—depending on how one reads it (columns or across), and then how/whether/if one doubles back to the other reading occasions a contrast between things that survive: “fossilized sequoia” and “gold of an oil slick”—that final of final moments “eating the sun” and the already disappearing human who would witness these things: “the bone museum” that we’ve peopled with artifacts we collect and reconstruct for our comfort. I love the stop and start of this form, the way it sounds like an incantation of strangeness, the disjointing of images, pauses like unguents.
I highly recommend picking up this strong-voiced micro-chap that engages with all sorts of bodies and making and uncovers various ways of understanding what any of this means—asking far more questions than it provides answers for. The cover art by Rachel Allen is beautiful and perfectly paired; what a gorgeous specimen of a book. Together, the images of fur and feather and claw—and the hands that make use of them—give new life to the beasts of the woods, whether seen in their natural habitat or behind museum glass.
As a poet and lover of music, fiction, and other creative media, I’ve always considered art to be magical.
There is something fantastic about how a poem or a song goes from the creator to another person and makes them connect to things. In Daniel José Older’s urban fantasy Shadowshaper, Sierra Santiago uses art to reclaim her magical heritage and strengthen her community.
Set in Brooklyn, New York, Sierra Santiago is an Afro-Latina teenager who just wants to enjoy her summer vacation with her friends. When she notices a neighborhood mural fading and the expression of the subject growing sad and angry, she is urged to finish her own mural by Manny, a friend of her grandfather Lazáro. Then, a walking corpse of a neighborhood man crashes a summer party and Sierra is thrust into the magical world of the shadowshapers. In order to protect her loved ones, Sierra must uncover the shadowshapers’ connection to her family and become a shadowshaper herself.
As an urban fantasy book, the real world manages to feel just as wonderful as the magical world. This is mainly due to the wonderful cast of characters that make up the people in Sierra’s life and the personal backgrounds that they come from. Two of my personal favorite characters were Tee and Izzy, lesbian girlfriends that were funny and loyal. Other favorites included Sierra’s Uncle Neville and Sierra’s intelligent, fashion opposite friend Bennie.
Besides their personalities, each character has a way of speaking that feels magical. One bit of dialogue that caught my attention features a back-and-forth between a group of domino-playing older gentlemen that were friends of Sierra’s grandpa Lazáro. In chapter six, Sierra pays them a visit and hears the following:In the real world, we already use art to remember and pass on the memories, traditions, and cultures of departed loved ones. Murals painted around cities become memorials and certain songs are sung, listened to, and written in tribute. However, Shadowshaper takes these things a step further by using the magic of shadowshaping to fight back against forces that try to eradicate an entire heritage. Protagonist Sierra Santiago must learn not only about shadowshaping, but also to stand up for the neighborhood and the culture that makes her who she is.
At the same time that the shadowshapers are being eradicated, Sierra’s multi-cultural neighborhood is experiencing gentrification. Places that Sierra and her friends used to go to are being transformed into establishments for white, middle class consumers. When the book opens, Sierra is in the middle of painting a mural on a building known as The Tower, a large-scale incomplete building that looms over the junklot where Manny and his friends play dominos. It is later revealed that Manny has a connection to the shadowshapers and that Sierra painting the mural was his way of trying to protect the neighborhood and the remaining shadowshapers.
Not only is Sierra fighting a battle within her own neighborhood, but she is also fighting an internal battle as well. Although she is confident in herself, there are times that she doesn’t feel she is enough of an Afro-Latina girl. Tía Rosa, her aunt, makes comments that contain anti-blackness and colorism (i.e. discrimination based on how light or dark one’s skin tone is). She says that Sierra’s friend Robbie is too dark and that Sierra’s hair is too nappy. In addition, Sierra also deals with sexual harassment while walking around her neighborhood, being shamed by her mom for her interest in shadowshaping, and sexism as a female shadowshaper.
Given all that Sierra experiences in her daily life, her heroic journey is deeply compelling. Sierra uses her artistic talent and shadowshaping to protect her neighborhood and reclaim a magical heritage she learns to appreciate through her family and friends. As a poet, I can’t help but admire Sierra Santiago and see part of myself in her. With paintbrush and chalk, Sierra Santiago shows that an artist can be a hero, a creative making something from shadows in order to express herself and preserve and protect what is important.
The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.
Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.
“Trouble at school, Sierra?” asked Mr. Jean-Louise. “Public school is a cesspool of poisonous bile.”
Manny threw his hands up, “¡Cállate, viejo!The child needs her education. Don’t ruin it for her just because you dropped out of kindergarten.”
Since the characters have strong ties to each other and their neighborhood, having the magical world of shadowshaping just underneath it makes them even more memorable. Shadowshaping involves giving spirits of departed loved ones and ancestors a physical form by fusing them with art. For Sierra and the other shadowshapers she encounters, the art is mainly visual, but shadowshaping can also be done through other creative means such as storytelling. The purpose of shadowshaping is to remember those who have come before and recently passed, preserving the past and present for the future generations.
In the real world, we already use art to remember and pass on the memories, traditions, and cultures of departed loved ones. Murals painted around cities become memorials and certain songs are sung, listened to, and written in tribute. However, Shadowshaper takes these things a step further by using the magic of shadowshaping to fight back against forces that try to eradicate an entire heritage. Protagonist Sierra Santiago must learn not only about shadowshaping, but also to stand up for the neighborhood and the culture that makes her who she is.
At the same time that the shadowshapers are being eradicated, Sierra’s multi-cultural neighborhood is experiencing gentrification. Places that Sierra and her friends used to go to are being transformed into establishments for white, middle class consumers. When the book opens, Sierra is in the middle of painting a mural on a building known as The Tower, a large-scale incomplete building that looms over the junklot where Manny and his friends play dominos. It is later revealed that Manny has a connection to the shadowshapers and that Sierra painting the mural was his way of trying to protect the neighborhood and the remaining shadowshapers.
Not only is Sierra fighting a battle within her own neighborhood, but she is also fighting an internal battle as well. Although she is confident in herself, there are times that she doesn’t feel she is enough of an Afro-Latina girl. Tía Rosa, her aunt, makes comments that contain anti-blackness and colorism (i.e. discrimination based on how light or dark one’s skin tone is). She says that Sierra’s friend Robbie is too dark and that Sierra’s hair is too nappy. In addition, Sierra also deals with sexual harassment while walking around her neighborhood, being shamed by her mom for her interest in shadowshaping, and sexism as a female shadowshaper.
Given all that Sierra experiences in her daily life, her heroic journey is deeply compelling. Sierra uses her artistic talent and shadowshaping to protect her neighborhood and reclaim a magical heritage she learns to appreciate through her family and friends. As a poet, I can’t help but admire Sierra Santiago and see part of myself in her. With paintbrush and chalk, Sierra Santiago shows that an artist can be a hero, a creative making something from shadows in order to express herself and preserve and protect what is important.
The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.
Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.
A particularly strong poem is “Bad Hunter,” set at the Taxidermy World Championships in Missouri. The speaker describes women who “flock around like smart pink birds” and “men wearing leaves” who “chew on toothpicks.” The poem continues to contrast these genders: men and women, boys and girls. Judges walk through, taking the measure of all the animals there: “this is how wet the nose should be, this is how / cocked the hoof.” The final lines showcase the juvenile of the species— “a girl dusts paint flecks off her road-kill / beaver. a boy licks a pearl of blood from his thumb.” How color-rich and sensual these details. The reader’s understanding of the poem is only deepened by its accompanying endnote, which describes the gendered divisions in the field—hunting is masculine and so women in taxidermy “encounter sexism and gender stereotyping.” However, the footnote informs us women’s numbers are increasing: “young, academically driven, and largely female.” The endnote concludes with lines that could be back in the poem: “Women in polo shirts. In poodle skirts. In camouflage. Combing dead birds as if they were still chirping.”
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