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Arsenal of Spitwads
by Misti Rainwater-Lites
(Purchase here.)
2006, 156 pages
Let it be said here first: Misti Rainwater-Lites is THE Confessional Poet Laureate of the United States.
It would be difficult to track down any serious underground poet who would embrace the label of “confessional poet,” and while Rainwaiter-Lites well knows she is not merely a confessional poet, it is more to her credit she does not deny its place in her work:
“I wish you confessional poetry.
Poetry that has been somewhere.
Poetry that hangs it all out to wash.
Poetry with a one two sucker punch
to the gut.
Poetry that doesn’t apologize.
If you read poetry that moons over lost love
and wrings its hands and whines that fine…
but don’t take Poe too seriously.
He died in the gutter.”
- from “Primer”
In other words, don’t be a confessional poet if you have nothing worth confessing. There is a risk in all of this of course. Arsenal of Spitwads, does have some rants which get hung up on the author’s need to get some personal shots in with her personal history, which can frequently come off as inaccessible, but more often than not there is also the reward that comes from mucking around in those areas:
“and the desert is more alive than I’ll ever be
I feel the presence of the rattlesnakes and the
Navajo ghosts that hate me and what I stand
for
they would like to watch the building burn
and so would I”
- from “Coyote Kinship”
Rainwater-Lites takes these risks in her longer prose pieces, but her strength is clearly the short form, where her cynical eye exposes not just the overly righteous (“Surrounded”, “Speak American”) and self-important (“Psycho Bitch Mom”, “Pretty Stupid Girls”) in swift, brutal strokes, but also the tragically flawed lemmings of the American heartland who believe themselves to be genuinely free when they are nothing more than automatons:
CRYSTAL
“all the guys want Crystal
all the guys line up for Crystal
even though she has long skanky two-toned
brown badly permed hair
and two kids and lives with Mom
and doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to
add to the conversation
'you know what I mean?'
'and, like'
'and I go
'and he goes'
'and she goes'
'there goes my phone'
but Crystal has a pretty sweet smile
she’s skinny and wears revealing shirts
every Friday
revealing her tiny cleavage
revealing her hopes of snaring a husband
and daddy
to pay her cellular bills and maybe buy her
a cute casa and a new car and keep her in
fake nails
I want to by Crystal, I confess
I want to be ignorant, blissfully so
a subliterate simple chica loca who knows
how to party
on down that cracked yellow brick road
not caring if I ever make it
to Kansas."
If one reads the “Crystal” in this poem as Crystal-Meth, than this becomes more than just a character sketch of some poor, doomed trailer park girl but an all out indictment of the consumer addled dreams slowly putrefying the core not just of flyover country but the dreams of everyone in our society.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that MRL also bills herself as a poet pornographer. True to her fierce independence and confessional nature, she is confounded by her attraction to the female form in the pages of soft focus, seventies style porn (modern ladies who are pretty and smart, and who might get down but never out who but not in the real world) while ruing the state of modern porn (male automatons penetrating collagen and saline enhanced blow up dolls.) Yet she still indulges in modern porn (“Sublime Pie”) and doesn’t always understand why she’s not a lesbian (“I’m Not A Lesbian But…”).
Arsenal of Spitwads is ultimately important because it’s a blast of smart, horny, chip-on-the-indentured-servant-shoulder truth from a very creative heart. If sometimes it feels like its veering off into a personal vendetta from someone’s diary, just hang on because that’s part of the cover charge. You have to be willing to go to those places to find something worth confessing.
-Paul Corman-Roberts
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