Katie Berta, retribution forthcoming: poems

 

I Will Put Your NameRight in the Poem

Don’t be offended—I willput your name right in the poem
because what you do iswho you are and we can all see what
that is. Or—don’t beoffended—I will put your name right
in the poem because I needyou to see that you don’t
scare me anymore. Hello,little man. Why are you so upset
to see your name in thepoem? Did you not say “whore”?
did you not say, “Hopeyou die soon”? I will put your name
right in the poem becauseI have saved all the receipts
for just this occasion. Iwill put your name right in the pom
because I don’t care ifit fucks your ass up, my dude.
I will put your nameright in the poem. Just wait for my poem,
little baby. Here itcomes.

Thereis a force behind and within the lyrics of Iowa poet Katie Berta’s full-lengthdebut, retribution forthcoming: poems (Athens OH: Ohio University Press,2024), winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, as selected by Claire Wahmanholm. Across a lyric simultaneously stark and lush, Berta offers astunning and expansive display of articulating devastating events and anenormous heart, one that no longer wishes to hold back. As the poem “I lived ina beautiful place” begins: “and then in a place of bitter cold. / I had aterrible brain. When the winter came, / it brought with it a series ofcomplications. / Always having to put on a hat and coat. / Snow falling overthe tops of your boots. / Many thoughts over which I had no control.” There isa clarity and a fierce self-protection, entirely finished with the nonsense ofothers, that is propulsive, across poems that are expansive, slick and scalpel-sharp.“The earth is short. Reason / is short. Each person’s extends /up over her head,” the poem “Cave,” near the end of the collection, begins, “petersout / as the air gets thin.” The poems carry enormous wounds and anxiety,populated by rapists, ex-boyfriends, rattlesnakes and the body of a deadmotorcyclist, most of which hold titles as warnings for content, whether “AfterI was raped the second time, I lost forty pounds,” “The women I thought of as popularin high school / are having babies who die” or “The NY Times Real EstateSection Publishes Pictures / inside the Expensive Apartment Belonging / toYour Ex-Boyfriend and His New Wife.” Composed as short essays or monologues, thereare poems here that are utterly devastating, all presented in such a clear,straightforward lyric, describing heartbreak, sexual assault, emotionalbrutality, thoughts of retribution alongside elements of absolute, open-heartedbeauty, working through and across the worst of things toward something better.The poem, for example, “Remembering that time in my life / when I used to thinka lot about innocence,” includes, towards the end: “Something about it touches/ me, touches a raw, open place, the way a man / never would. / Is it the corerushing up to take the place / of all that stuff, all that was outsideof me, entering / almost without permission?” It is a lot to digest, and evenmore to process, but throughout, both author and narrator have clearly realizedthey deserve better, and these poems are the direct result of that discoveryand new ownership. As that same poem offers, to close: “Here is my boyfriend, /engaged, as usual, in the garden. I watch him from the window / as he moves, /like a lake does, in the wind.”