by Allyssa Wolf

Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2006

82 pages, http://www.spdbooks.org/

There is something waiting in Allyssa Wolf's eighty-two page collection of poems. Something dark and familiar. Wolf's manuscript, a matte black cover bears the name VAUDEVILLE in small white font. There's an eeriness that emerges right away and beckons the reader to approach this is an unusual collection. There are no blurbs on the back cover lauding the poet. This manuscript in many ways is completely naked and on display. A beautiful vulnerability

Wolf's collection of poems is a re-imagining of the exoticism of American vaudeville. Her book of poems is divided into five sections; The Doll Numbers, The Comic, M. The Dancer, The Spiritualist, and Animal Show. Here poems exist on an abstract plane, ambiguous, and ethereal, and yet concretely reminiscent of the macabre that is present in the mundane of our everyday existence:

"(That Thanksgiving I made soup from instant potatoes.
I think I had. Instant heaven. Rooms gravy and grainy.
I tried hard. Not to bump into any of her. Leftover ghosts."

--From M. The Dancer

The construct of the poems reflect erasure at its best. There are missing parts that force the reader to think, to unearth the dormant imagination. Some readers may find it disturbing, but not all art is meant to comfort.

"After they painted and sliced the mouth
I desired a sex, and thought
to smile, what is it? now
Am in this body"

--From Third Doll

The Comic, a play in verse, brings to together Lenny Bruce, his wife and stripper Honey Harlow, Kip Kinkel the Oregonian teenager that killed his parents and then went to his high school and shot twenty five students before being stopped, The Red Singer, and others to create a mysterious scene that can only make sense in the most guttural places of our psyche..

"Kit Kinkel: Get with the program, fuckface!

The Red
Singer:
(singing In the heat of all my days
nervously) I chew the meat of all my nights
Man am I just like a kite
I've never known
Nobody.
Lenny: It's going around, it's reeling.
Inside my mouth.
That's all.
I echoed.
Inside this (he looks inside his mouth.)
How could it?
That's not wisdom.
An act of being.
Anyhow
I have fucked them all.
Every way.
Shape of form.
I just couldn't stop.
Really. I couldn't stop.
Mouthing.
Honey: The architecture of the eye
relieves my tooth-stained heart
opened and closed
it breathes underwater
soothes the black waves
whose shock of salt burns.

Wolf's collection takes liberties with the readers imagination, harnesses language, sound, and even the page, that is to say that in her loose association of what is known and unknown she crafts a well defined and purposeful poetic journey that offers no answers, but leaves a residue to be considered and reconsidered. She culls from the material of ordinary American life, all that lives in the palpable and yet invisible terrain of emotionality and memory. There are so many things within the pages of this text that are imaginary, and yet universal, and perhaps because of that more real than reality. Something's that are felt are more real than that which can be seen.

Unicorn-Dog

Oh hunted, O haunted
Washed in glitter
And howl-worn
"Maybe"
I shall drool upon myself
For the perfume of eternity
"Maybe"
I am your only friend
Don't forget
The simple, quiet
Everyday things
Come on
Can't sing
Birds dead said
You
Like a spike of light

-MK Chavez