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Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting
In Shivanee Ramlochan’s first collection of poems, Trinidad and Caribbean poetry finds an exciting new voice, one that displays a sharp intelligence, and iconoclastic spirit and fertility of imagination.
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
June 28, 2018
Look, the work of living is mean and hard. It often requires muscle and sinew; blade and poison. So, I get it if you want your nighttime reading soft. Matter of fact, that might be best. These are not poems to take to your pillow unless you too have things that haunt you in the dreaming hours and you sleep with a 3line near your bed.
If you look to these poems for a parade of warrior priestess to defend you from your nightmares, they are not there. The douens, grandmothers, devils, ghosts, crossdressers, brides, husbands, goddesses, birds and abortionists therein will leave you to your own devices if it means their own survival. They, like these poems, belong to themselves alone. Without apology or need. If by chance they come to your aid when you call them, be assured that it is only accidental.
But if you need a wolf to run with; someone to help sharpen your blade for what is coming and what has been; if you have hard things in your lineage and need cold comfort; if you want to feel naked and bare and irrevocably seen, like I did while living with these poems, go brave. Keep salt in your pocket and your blade sharp. You will be forever changed.
If you look to these poems for a parade of warrior priestess to defend you from your nightmares, they are not there. The douens, grandmothers, devils, ghosts, crossdressers, brides, husbands, goddesses, birds and abortionists therein will leave you to your own devices if it means their own survival. They, like these poems, belong to themselves alone. Without apology or need. If by chance they come to your aid when you call them, be assured that it is only accidental.
But if you need a wolf to run with; someone to help sharpen your blade for what is coming and what has been; if you have hard things in your lineage and need cold comfort; if you want to feel naked and bare and irrevocably seen, like I did while living with these poems, go brave. Keep salt in your pocket and your blade sharp. You will be forever changed.
June 6, 2017
As much as I have been anticipating this collection, it is astonishing. Shivanee exhibits a command of form, language, and emotion that is a joy to experience (even when what is on the page is far from joyful). What an exciting time to be reading Caribbean poetry!
July 27, 2017
Shivanee is the definitive modern poetic voice of the Caribbean.
Most poetry is obsessively circling something divine/sublime. They yearn, and if lucky, can produce one beautiful line. One dazzling line.
Every line in every poem in Haunting is a surprise. It is wrenching. It is horrifying. It is the kind of book that comes along once in your life to shatter the grounding cables that kept you safe.
After every poem I held the book close to my chest as if to thank it for new understanding. The ancient doors, newly unlocked, that contained multitudes and I am grateful to have been able to touch the smallest part of that.
This book is Obeah. Practice it well.
Most poetry is obsessively circling something divine/sublime. They yearn, and if lucky, can produce one beautiful line. One dazzling line.
Every line in every poem in Haunting is a surprise. It is wrenching. It is horrifying. It is the kind of book that comes along once in your life to shatter the grounding cables that kept you safe.
After every poem I held the book close to my chest as if to thank it for new understanding. The ancient doors, newly unlocked, that contained multitudes and I am grateful to have been able to touch the smallest part of that.
This book is Obeah. Practice it well.
May 11, 2017
Finding words for poems that are as bright as burst stars and as sharp as polished knives can often be incredibly difficult. Such is the case with this. Some poetry grabs you by the shoulders and insists that you listen; this collection, however, is an alluring figure under the shadow of a street lamp, beckoning you close to it, eager to whisper itself to you while your neck is exposed. Do you want to take that risk? You don't want to, but you should. Trust me. Whatever happens, you will not regret it.
May 20, 2017
very moving, unforgettable images
June 4, 2018
Here's a link to my full review in the Wasafiri Review: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Jw...
August 23, 2023
This poetry collection was just _phenomenal_. Speculative poetry always has compelling prospects as a form of poetry, but Ramlochan's execution, in which the myths are derived from Hindu and Trinidadian folklore/mythology and, results in something truly remarkable. The deities and creatures from these myths are both interwoven and interact themselves with ideas surrounding gender, sexuality, generational trauma and colonialism, in what really can only be described as a hauntingly emotional journey. Divided into three acts, the reader is presented with the beats of a fantasy protagonist (The beginning incident, the struggle for survival, and the after-persistence to live) but with the distinctive presence of these lingering spirits, who accompany both the speaker and the reader throughout. After some of the poems, I genuinely had to just sit there, or take a break in order to ruminate on them.
Really, it is hard to describe. I'm starting to learn that you cannot always articulate your reaction to poetry, and that there shouldn't always be a need to define it. During my reading, I mostly let the poems exist on their own visceral strength and gorgeous writing, and added _many_ 'oh my god' or 'this is beautiful's or 'this is devastating' along the way.
I would also like to thank this anthology for leading me on a little rabbit hole of research about Hindu mythology and festival's - I spent a great evening learning about something new, which I love.
Really, it is hard to describe. I'm starting to learn that you cannot always articulate your reaction to poetry, and that there shouldn't always be a need to define it. During my reading, I mostly let the poems exist on their own visceral strength and gorgeous writing, and added _many_ 'oh my god' or 'this is beautiful's or 'this is devastating' along the way.
I would also like to thank this anthology for leading me on a little rabbit hole of research about Hindu mythology and festival's - I spent a great evening learning about something new, which I love.
January 13, 2024
I'd definitely read more of her work, but I think this is one I'll need to revisit over time, over and over, to really ~~get it all.
September 28, 2018
I am no longer your bride. We ate the words for marriage, for sacrament,
for lawfully wed. I fed my sister the ivory dress, so she might keep
warm; I placed pearl seed buttons where her eyes once shone.
Nothing in you lacks her colour,/ so you call it love.
I read this in one sitting, in one day, engrossed but too quickly, because I had to give it back to the library. I loved it all at once, but feel I lost so much I couldn't savour. In the first section, I have little of the mythology of these women, so I didn't see very well where Ramlochan came from or went. In the middle section, I felt I didn't know enough of trauma to understand; she writes meaningfully, but not for me. Little of this is for me. I took much from it, still, in the places I could find to relate to.
At night, when all else fails to remember my name,
I hear you,
sewing drought in damp recesses,
reckoning your sins in sargasso thread.
You teach me to be sad,/ but to be sad and work.
This collection is beautifully wrought, it creates a world its own and inhabits this world with fierce women, with sharpness, sex, forests, fire, and blood. Fields, skin, women, bones, and pain.
turning wolf
to woman
to wolf again.
You had scrubbed knees, a moon face, two hairplaits like black rope,
thick as pregnant pit vipers with red ribbon tongues.
I would love to come to this place again, to spend more time with Ramlochan's mythos, her wilds, seductions, and burning words. To end, here are pieces that touched and moved me:
I
A Nursery of Gods for My Half-White Child
The Abortionist's Daughter (both)
My Sister of the Coral Mouth
The Virgin Speaks of What She Endured
Materna
Fire, Fire*
The Abortionist's Granddaughter Gives Blood*
Caracara
III
All the Dead, All the Living
No Curandera But Yo Sóla
Song of the Only Surviving Grandmother
Good Names For Three Children
Clink Clink
Camp Burn Down*
The Lecture of Dead Gold
What Fights, Still*
Vivek Considers the Nature of Secrets*
for lawfully wed. I fed my sister the ivory dress, so she might keep
warm; I placed pearl seed buttons where her eyes once shone.
Nothing in you lacks her colour,/ so you call it love.
I read this in one sitting, in one day, engrossed but too quickly, because I had to give it back to the library. I loved it all at once, but feel I lost so much I couldn't savour. In the first section, I have little of the mythology of these women, so I didn't see very well where Ramlochan came from or went. In the middle section, I felt I didn't know enough of trauma to understand; she writes meaningfully, but not for me. Little of this is for me. I took much from it, still, in the places I could find to relate to.
At night, when all else fails to remember my name,
I hear you,
sewing drought in damp recesses,
reckoning your sins in sargasso thread.
You teach me to be sad,/ but to be sad and work.
This collection is beautifully wrought, it creates a world its own and inhabits this world with fierce women, with sharpness, sex, forests, fire, and blood. Fields, skin, women, bones, and pain.
turning wolf
to woman
to wolf again.
You had scrubbed knees, a moon face, two hairplaits like black rope,
thick as pregnant pit vipers with red ribbon tongues.
I would love to come to this place again, to spend more time with Ramlochan's mythos, her wilds, seductions, and burning words. To end, here are pieces that touched and moved me:
I
A Nursery of Gods for My Half-White Child
The Abortionist's Daughter (both)
My Sister of the Coral Mouth
The Virgin Speaks of What She Endured
Materna
Fire, Fire*
The Abortionist's Granddaughter Gives Blood*
Caracara
III
All the Dead, All the Living
No Curandera But Yo Sóla
Song of the Only Surviving Grandmother
Good Names For Three Children
Clink Clink
Camp Burn Down*
The Lecture of Dead Gold
What Fights, Still*
Vivek Considers the Nature of Secrets*
June 22, 2017
"everyone knows i am a haunting" does not go gently.
it burns, slices razors through layers of self wrapped warm+tight for protection, drowns what you think you know in seas of blood, lush canefields of desecration, jungles of sadness and immortality...these poems are elemental, are of kali, ganesh, shiva, ifa, j'ouvert, obeah, sargassum, douen, soucouyant, faith, immolation, desire, teeth, hair, sinew, wings, womb, knuckles, jawbones, blood...
these poems do not let you go gently. they snatch your insides, sparking the fires of mothers, daughters, and would-be daughters deep in your belly, becoming strength to cultivate a life that knows love is a festival even on the blade of a 3line. these poems will take you to your knees, splintered with the broken pieces you salvage in the wake of shattered expectations; these poems know out-of-body as both deliverance and destruction; these poems brandish orgasms as weapons. these poems may bruise your soul but make you want to breathe inside them still, scar tissue forming against the darkness, thanking the universe for life+lessons. these poems are the tears you need to cleanse, the bush bath, the blue soap. these poems speak of their origins and ours. these poems are already in your blood and your everything is waiting to hear their song...
read.
dance.
live.
it burns, slices razors through layers of self wrapped warm+tight for protection, drowns what you think you know in seas of blood, lush canefields of desecration, jungles of sadness and immortality...these poems are elemental, are of kali, ganesh, shiva, ifa, j'ouvert, obeah, sargassum, douen, soucouyant, faith, immolation, desire, teeth, hair, sinew, wings, womb, knuckles, jawbones, blood...
these poems do not let you go gently. they snatch your insides, sparking the fires of mothers, daughters, and would-be daughters deep in your belly, becoming strength to cultivate a life that knows love is a festival even on the blade of a 3line. these poems will take you to your knees, splintered with the broken pieces you salvage in the wake of shattered expectations; these poems know out-of-body as both deliverance and destruction; these poems brandish orgasms as weapons. these poems may bruise your soul but make you want to breathe inside them still, scar tissue forming against the darkness, thanking the universe for life+lessons. these poems are the tears you need to cleanse, the bush bath, the blue soap. these poems speak of their origins and ours. these poems are already in your blood and your everything is waiting to hear their song...
read.
dance.
live.
October 13, 2017
One of the most affecting collections of poetry I’ve ever been in the good grace to experience. Shivanee has never *not* been in great command of the written (and spoken, if you’ve ever heard one of her interviews or discussions) word, but here there’s mastery: she conjures images and feelings plucked straight from hell yet in the work of wrestling with them to arrange them on a page she calcifies them, crushes them up finely and re-presents them as talcum powder, healing and regenerative and smooth—but not without a deep, painful, organic provenance. And that’s what haunts. Nothing here is meek; her play with form is inimitable and subversive, yet at times even casually fun and joyous; her ideas about gender and bodies and spirits push against the limits of possibility to expose as-of-yet unspoken truths; every word contains many infinities and I hope hard for a second collection soon. I wept several times while reading this. What a wonderful blessing, gift, of a book—and how exciting to know this is only her first bullet. I look forward to being shot again.
June 17, 2018
Shivanee Ramlochan’s glorious debut collection, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting, is asking you to read it slowly, and with your heart in your throat. I have returned to this collection again and again, finding new echoes, running my fingers along the sharp places, closing my eyes and savouring the fierce and fearsome moments of sublimity... and there are so many. Here is the grandmother’s land, difficult with tangled roots and unspoken histories. Here is the daughter, part wolf, part god, part forest, mapping a land both strange and familiar, wielding her own tongue like a blade, or like a spell against those who would try to devour her. It is a world utterly close and known to me, one that I recognize and I walk through every day of my life, but there are also worlds within the world of the poems that are new. More is revealed every time the reader returns to walk among the stalks of cane with wet hooves and wild eyes. Shivanee’s poems are worlds unto themselves. They are weaving together, with strong and certain thread, the familiar and the divine, the beautiful and the terrible.
September 8, 2021
Elegant language and such an phenomenal book!
July 4, 2019
Everyone Knows I Am A Haunting stays on my nightstand, for lectio divina. It is that kind of illuminated manuscript, sacred and profane. Oh, you didn't know a book could be an oracle and a priest, comfort and cowl for the small hours? Oh, yes, Shivanee Ramlochan won't let us forget what poetry is for--if it can't lie beside me in darkness, I don't need it. And we need what this poet was born to bring us.
I once took part in a river ritual that ended in a blood pact, with beads of mingled red on a mirror shard. When you read her work, there is a mirror and our blood is on it. We are reflected, darkly: we look into the water and watch it shudder with intimacy. Call this not a book but a blood ritual--Shivanee, we're yours now.
I once took part in a river ritual that ended in a blood pact, with beads of mingled red on a mirror shard. When you read her work, there is a mirror and our blood is on it. We are reflected, darkly: we look into the water and watch it shudder with intimacy. Call this not a book but a blood ritual--Shivanee, we're yours now.
January 12, 2020
I dare anyone to read it all in one sitting.
Each line of poetry is a stomach punch of visceral nostalgia. Shivanee writes with such vividness, you can taste blood in your mouth and feel oil on your fingers. I have cried reading poems. I have stopped mid-way in poems because they evoked such profound pain. But you laugh too. The poems snap jokey scenes of J'ouvert morning and rum shop noise. It is an emotional tug at all parts, if you have any heart in you at all.
Haunting is at my personal top of the best group words I've ever read.
Each line of poetry is a stomach punch of visceral nostalgia. Shivanee writes with such vividness, you can taste blood in your mouth and feel oil on your fingers. I have cried reading poems. I have stopped mid-way in poems because they evoked such profound pain. But you laugh too. The poems snap jokey scenes of J'ouvert morning and rum shop noise. It is an emotional tug at all parts, if you have any heart in you at all.
Haunting is at my personal top of the best group words I've ever read.
February 5, 2021
There is so much to be found in this amazing collection. There is pain and brutality, yes, a bearing of witness that feels necessary and profound. But there is also more than that. There is a levity that comes in poems like "I See That Lilith Hath Been With Thee Again." There is tenderness and a reaching toward joy, or at least joy's possibility. As poet Richard Georges once said about this book, "[Ramlochan] has this unflinching way of just peeling back the layers and dimensions of her soul that is just arresting." What a colossal work this collection is. I'm happy to give it my highest recommendation!
November 11, 2020
It has taken me 11 months of read this superb, supremely crafted collection. Ramlochan's poems haunt with their devastating interweaving of spiritual invocation, family, sexual assault, and family. This is a winding poetic garden strewn with all manner of flora and fauna, with statues that beckon close examination.
I took a year too read this, and each poem was worth that time.
I took a year too read this, and each poem was worth that time.
February 12, 2020
Brought to tears flipping open a page, read in one day.
March 19, 2024
Haunting, lyrical poetry by a stellar voice. Looking forward to more by this author.
January 9, 2020
Everyone Knows I am a Haunting is haunting, touching, powerful and generally amazing.
July 2, 2021
A beautiful collection that I already want to visit again.
Read
November 12, 2019Read for uni
July 2, 2022
// Fatherhood
"is the bruise I only pretend to scrape away on Sunday visits to Golden Grove;
is the catechism book of the church of my cousin,
his voice in my ear saying
I believe in you, I believe in you,
I believe you won't wreck this;
is the drive back to Quinam with Tracy Chapman coming through deep
like the first woman to save herself
the first law to write herself
the first verse quieting on my mouth like an heirloom punch,
shining purple with value;
is the beach at night when all the puncheon is done in my uncle's house,
is my cousin's hand in mine under every star
is my cousin's hand under my shirt
the realization that Columbus used motions like this to caulk his ships—
steady, firm, taking
everything all at once."
I got to know about Ramlochan through Kiki on bookstagram and I am glad I finally got around to reading this. Shivanee is a powerhouse, that goes without saying. The subversive, complex poems are mesmerizing fractals set into rapid motion. They demand sustained attention and are certainly challenging to parse. Visceral joy erupts in the reader who is immersed in these verses, a palpable delight in Ramlochan's use of language where categories of nouns, verbs, and adjectives get blurred and transgressed, vibrant imagery sumptuously filling the mouth.
Beings from disparate mythologies stride side by side in a clear display of the plural Caribbean rejecting homogenizing narratives flattening the lives irreducibly altered due to colonization. In an interview, Ramlochan clearly says, "It’s my honour to write about women who bleed, fuck, dance, cuss, transact and thief without apology, be they gentle or garrotte-hearted." The women are firm and bowed, obliging and recalcitrant. As in the final poem, "You tell him / I am the queen / the comeuppance / the hard heretic that nature intended", spirits resolute, undaunted, and alive.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
"is the bruise I only pretend to scrape away on Sunday visits to Golden Grove;
is the catechism book of the church of my cousin,
his voice in my ear saying
I believe in you, I believe in you,
I believe you won't wreck this;
is the drive back to Quinam with Tracy Chapman coming through deep
like the first woman to save herself
the first law to write herself
the first verse quieting on my mouth like an heirloom punch,
shining purple with value;
is the beach at night when all the puncheon is done in my uncle's house,
is my cousin's hand in mine under every star
is my cousin's hand under my shirt
the realization that Columbus used motions like this to caulk his ships—
steady, firm, taking
everything all at once."
I got to know about Ramlochan through Kiki on bookstagram and I am glad I finally got around to reading this. Shivanee is a powerhouse, that goes without saying. The subversive, complex poems are mesmerizing fractals set into rapid motion. They demand sustained attention and are certainly challenging to parse. Visceral joy erupts in the reader who is immersed in these verses, a palpable delight in Ramlochan's use of language where categories of nouns, verbs, and adjectives get blurred and transgressed, vibrant imagery sumptuously filling the mouth.
Beings from disparate mythologies stride side by side in a clear display of the plural Caribbean rejecting homogenizing narratives flattening the lives irreducibly altered due to colonization. In an interview, Ramlochan clearly says, "It’s my honour to write about women who bleed, fuck, dance, cuss, transact and thief without apology, be they gentle or garrotte-hearted." The women are firm and bowed, obliging and recalcitrant. As in the final poem, "You tell him / I am the queen / the comeuppance / the hard heretic that nature intended", spirits resolute, undaunted, and alive.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
February 10, 2021
Shivanee Ramlochan’s searing debut collection of poetry, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting
is an uncompromising force of insurgence. The survival stories in this collection do
not shy away from ‘shrieking, floating, bastarding into birth’. The female, non-binary and
queer speakers ferociously voice their struggles against patriarchal oppression, inhabiting
the lacunae in dominant historical narratives that seek to violently erase their traumatic
experiences while also marginalising their voices. Ramlochan unflinchingly
explores survival as a violent phenomenon, engaging with the ignored, but insidious reality
of recovery. However, these poems also portray survival as a tender, intimate force, reaping strength from little salves of everyday life. A liberating, radicalising, nurturing voice !
is an uncompromising force of insurgence. The survival stories in this collection do
not shy away from ‘shrieking, floating, bastarding into birth’. The female, non-binary and
queer speakers ferociously voice their struggles against patriarchal oppression, inhabiting
the lacunae in dominant historical narratives that seek to violently erase their traumatic
experiences while also marginalising their voices. Ramlochan unflinchingly
explores survival as a violent phenomenon, engaging with the ignored, but insidious reality
of recovery. However, these poems also portray survival as a tender, intimate force, reaping strength from little salves of everyday life. A liberating, radicalising, nurturing voice !
October 3, 2017
Run from this book or towards it, according to your level of bravery. According to which direction your feet are pinioned to their ankle-bolts. Either way, Run. If you are afraid of the dark. If you are afraid of death. If you are afraid of yourself. These poems won’t help you. If you run from truth, these poems will not aid and abet you. They will drag you out of every hiding place. They will call the name even you don’t know for yourself. They will follow you through the dark, to the deepest bog-fallows of your experience. Saying I know where you are from. I know. I know. And I will meet you there, even if you get lost on the way. They will hold up a lantern for you, oh yes. And with it you will set yourself on fire. Use the light to read these poems one last time.
January 12, 2018
I don't know anything about reading poetry, but the poems I felt I understood evoked emotions and created mental imagery that was powerful and resonating. A few things I feel I needed more information about Trinidad or Caribbean culture and folklore to understand and Google helped a bit with that. Poetry is not something I know how to interpret when the meanings are too hidden, and when I can, I'm just delighted. I like it more perhaps when the subject matter is clear and present even as the title so you have some notion of where you are standing when reading. - Some of these had that- And I know it could have taken away some depth from others if they were bluntly explained. But I was disappointed that there were some where the meaning was close but not close enough for me to get it.
August 16, 2020
3.5 stars
There are many wonderful images and lines here. Some poems left me speechless but some also left me disappointed as I did not get them nor did I feel anything after reading them, which is important for me. I think that if I don't understand a poem but do FEEL something after, it works. Sadly, some poems here did not reach that level.
There are many wonderful images and lines here. Some poems left me speechless but some also left me disappointed as I did not get them nor did I feel anything after reading them, which is important for me. I think that if I don't understand a poem but do FEEL something after, it works. Sadly, some poems here did not reach that level.
August 8, 2017
The language is exquisite! The imagery is wonderful. I haven't loved a collection of poetry like I loved this one, in a long, long, long time.
March 27, 2022
“Why an acreage?
Never give a woman more sadness than she needs.
From this fabric, from this persistent earth, she will wrangle
greater things than men can fathom.”
…
“Give a woman an acreage of humiliation, with one spade,
one crucifix, one box of straight-backed pins.
You’ve given her nothing she can grow.
Within the year she will run up hard against the borders of her land,
shrieking, scouring the air for a way to flee her sex.”
— from THE ABORTIONIST’S DAUGHTER DECLARES HER LOVE
TITLE—Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting
AUTHOR—Shivanee Ramlochan
PUBLISHED—2017
GENRE—poetry
SETTING—Trinidad & Tobago
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—womanhood, family, love, violent patriarchal oppression, supernatural entities: deities & spirits, fire, Nature, legacies, heritage & inheritance, Caribbean life, history, & culture
WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
IMAGERY—⭐️⭐️��️⭐️⭐️
FEELING—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
BONUS ELEMENT/S—Folklore!
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“…Oh,
fire, fire
sets the leather shell of our tent alight; the truth is
too hot to hold and all I want is to be burned.”
— from FIRE, FIRE
My favorite thing about the experience of reading poetry is also why it’s so hard for me to write a review for a collection of poetry because all of my reactions and responses are so visceral and so subconscious that they can’t even translate into words much less a string of coherent sentences…
For me, this collection was beautiful the way that broken pottery and beached seaweed and browning sugar is beautiful—deep and rich, with the unmistakable undercurrents of grief and transformation. It’s unsettling how close intense beauty and unthinkable trauma lie together in life as in these poems. The natural world is the true foundation for women’s living, power, and desires but the earth is damaged, women’s bodies are damaged, but the spirits rage like a neverdying fire and shine bright and beautiful in spite of all that is against them.
The new husband usurping the first womanswife and the aborted possibility of a matriarchal paradise that was promised at the first beginning of the world. Do we live now following a rebirth or a death?
Read each line seven times, walk away, return, read them another seven times. Hear the voices thousandfold as the realities and relevancies spiral outwards to create bigger and bigger concentric circles until your place becomes looped in for these events effect us all…
“You tell him
I am the queen
the comeuppance
the hard heretic that nature intended.”
— from VIVEK CHOOSES HIS HUSBANDS
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
TW // abortion, rape, grief (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)
Further Reading—
- Te Kaihau The Windeater, by Keri Hulme
- The Collected Poetry of Audre Lorde
- Hag, by Tamara Jobe
- Content Warning: Everything, by Akwaeke Emezi (TBR)
- Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, by Warsaw Shire (TBR)
Most of these poems cannot even be referenced in quotes because they are written like maps, each part pointing to another part distant yet connected, using repetition and gapped emphasis to form its “message”, paint its images… However these were some of my favorite lines…
Favorite Quotes—
from ‘A NURSERY OF GODS FOR MY HALF-WHITE CHILD
“The first woman boiled black in an eldritch kitchen;
lay it out on the thin back of the world for the sun’s grave.
—If you must cry for a man, do it dancing on his skull.”
“there is no such thing as an accidental shrine.”
from THE ABORTIONIST’S DAUGHTER DECLARES HER LOVE
“Why an acreage?
Never give a woman more sadness than she needs.
From this fabric, from this persistent earth, she will wrangle
greater things than men can fathom.”
“Give a woman an acreage of humiliation, with one spade,
one crucifix, one box of straight-backed pins.
You’ve given her nothing she can grow.
Within the year she will run up hard against the borders of her land,
shrieking, scouring the air for a way to flee her sex.”
from DUENNE LARA
“I take the four rivers of the forest by throat and algal sinew,
pump the waters into my lungs. Come,
I’ll christen you away from the devil’s doorstep,
duenne suitor, duenne saviour, duenne dowry,
Duenne, you are mine…”
“The wooden atlas delivers deeper rings in us
while the devil tries again to win your heart,
grinning.”
from DUENNE LORCA
“Nothing the forest raises is a monster.”
from THE VIRGIN SPEAKS OF WHAT SHE ENDURED
“Come, burst me into song.”
from MATERNA
“Her old prayers quiver, faced with fresh ghosts.”
from FIRE, FIRE
“…Who told you these tales, I ask him as he
whispers fire, fire on my breastbone.”
“…Oh,
fire, fire
sets the leather shell of our tent alight; the truth is
too hot to hold and all I want is to be burned.”
“It gets so cold that the rivers forget how to dream in thaw tongues…”
from THE ABORTIONIST’S GRANDDAUGHTER GIVES BLOOD
“gasping, learning
how to breathe,
how to survive with
so much fire.”
from “II. Nail It to the Barn Door Where It Happened”
“‘You did not break me.
You did not break me.
Yesterday, I learned to walk again.’
Your ankle will still be ruined forever.
Blast the bolted doors into hell’s abattoir.”
from “III. You Wait for Five Years, and Then”
“You take no one’s counsel. Head for the
earth that might have you. Hollow a pit that breathes,
gives pain, does not swallow. The night watches.
You are turning in, turning deeper,
battering out a girl that reckons victories
in pockets of white stones.”
from “VII: The Open Mic of Every Deya, Burning.”
“There lies an ache
in the place I was ransacked. Only this poem knows it.
Each line break bursts me open
for applause, hands slapping like something hard and holy is grating out gold halleluiahs
beneath the proscenium of his grave.”
from ALL THE DEAD, ALL THE LIVING
“Play all the dead and all the living in you…”
from SHEPHERDESS BOXCUTTER: ONE
“We invent the beasts that we breed.
We silence the night with the startle of our starters.
So salve me.
Seek me in the ruins of that old cave, find me flinging
red flags over eye and under fist to say what I haven’t said, to let
the pitch bind me.
Blind me.”
from CAMP BURN DOWN
“Nothing touched us except the rest of the world.”
from WHAT FIGHTS, STILL
“You kiss her like wildfire levels dry bush.
You can’t give her less
than the ruination of you.”
from CROSSDRESSING AT DIVALI NAGAR
“We giggle like blind chicks gaggling free of the slaughterhouse…”
“I trace a lotus onto your back, a broken moon between
the segments of your toes…”
from FATHERHOOD
“like the first woman to save herself
the first law to write herself
the first verse quieting on my mouth like an heirloom punch,
shining purple with value…”
from VIVEK CHOOSES HIS HUSBANDS
“You tell him
I am the queen
the comeuppance
the hard heretic that nature intended.”
September 22, 2019
These poems will tear your heart out of your body. They will make you see language with fresh eyes. Whatever I say here will be insufficient to celebrate the power of Shivanee Ramlochan's poetry. Is it okay for me to quote a few of her mesmerizing lines, chosen nearly at random, since they are all worthy of quotation?
Nothing the forest raises is a monster.
Your sisters, red howler and river otter,
renounced school for the kiss of the mushroom-altar,
water sweetening their pelts.
**********************
My new husband is a thaumaturgist.
Tenderly, he plants songs in me
the better to treat the new year
with fire.
**********************
I take the four rivers of the forest by throat and algal sinew,
pump the waters into my lungs. Come,
I'll christen you away from the devil's doorstep,
duenne suitor, duenne savior, duenne dowry
...
Come here, she marrow-bites
**********************
Don't say Tunapuna Police Station.
Say you found yourself in the cave of a minotaur, not
knowing how you got there, with a lap of red thread.
Don't say forced anal entry,
Say you learned that some flowers bloom and die
at night. Say you remember stamen, filament,
cross-pollination, say that hummingbirds are
vital to the process.
Give the minotaur time to write in the police ledger. Lap
the red thread
around the hummingbird vase.
.....
Nothing the forest raises is a monster.
Your sisters, red howler and river otter,
renounced school for the kiss of the mushroom-altar,
water sweetening their pelts.
**********************
My new husband is a thaumaturgist.
Tenderly, he plants songs in me
the better to treat the new year
with fire.
**********************
I take the four rivers of the forest by throat and algal sinew,
pump the waters into my lungs. Come,
I'll christen you away from the devil's doorstep,
duenne suitor, duenne savior, duenne dowry
...
Come here, she marrow-bites
**********************
Don't say Tunapuna Police Station.
Say you found yourself in the cave of a minotaur, not
knowing how you got there, with a lap of red thread.
Don't say forced anal entry,
Say you learned that some flowers bloom and die
at night. Say you remember stamen, filament,
cross-pollination, say that hummingbirds are
vital to the process.
Give the minotaur time to write in the police ledger. Lap
the red thread
around the hummingbird vase.
.....
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