Rachel McKibbens, 'Pink Elephant' (Cypher Books, 2009)

Rachel McKibbens's lovely and serrated debut collection, Pink Elephant (Cypher Books), reminds us why poetry as testimony is so necessary. Ex-punk rock chola and mother of five, 2009 Women’s Individual World Poetry Slam champion Rachel McKibbens writes about abandonment and abuse in stark, startling language and well-wrought fable, delivered in well-paced lines, laying bare the history of a woman who's "fed [her] body to the hungry for years."

In "The First Time," the speaker and her little brother run away:

...we filled a shopping bag full of toys,
spoons and a jar of peanut butter

climbed the wall behind our apartment complex
and walked along the train tracks,
where we had sacrificed handfuls of pennies
and misbehaved dolls.

I was six years old, wearing a nightgown

In hindsight, her speaker concludes that "the maggots in the kitchen sink, / mother passed out on the porch," that home life which she and her brother flee, is what truly belongs to them. McKibbens's poems give us substance and not therapy. She reveals the learned and practical codes of behavior which enable the children to get by. In "Doggie Bag Etiquette (Stepmother 101)," the children listen to dad and stepmom through the bedroom door, and learn about their father's love. "But if there was screaming, the crash of a body, / then silence -- the phones were ripped out of the walls and we became // his children again. And the three of us would take off...."

McKibbens does not romanticize victimhood; she simply means to show us how unchecked violence reproduces itself. Her tone is matter-of-fact, and the scenes she writes are unflinching. "Tomboy," reads as fable of internalized misogyny, in which her speaker captures a mermaid, who is the mythic idealized woman. She speaks "a wild ocean language I could not comprehend." The mermaid’s inability to be understood causes the speaker to enact the learned behavior of belittling and inflicting pain. "I stood over her, disgusted. Smashed a mirror against her breasts / then sucked the final splinters of moisture from her lips." In "The Day After the First Time We Ran Away From Home," we see the brother enact a learned behavior upon the neighbor's turtle. He has lured it into his yard with piece of lettuce. Once the lettuce has run out, once the brother has nothing left to offer it such that it starts to leave, the brother’s rage is switched on. He kicks and cracks the turtle; "by then / there was no going back, so he sprayed / the turtle's head with Raid / and wrapped it in up a bath towel / and threw it into the garbage bin...."

There is a difference between running away, and bringing the abuse to an end by confronting it. Something else can begin only after a previous thing ends. In "The Last Time," alone, her speaker uses the father’s tool, "the hammer / with his initials burned deep / into the handle" against him.

... he stared
only at the weapon in my hand
and I looked at him and said,
If you ever touch us again,
I will kill you.

And then he saw me.

Okay, he said.
Okay.

In "Cardinal" and other poems, her speaker appears split in two, as if she is becoming acquainted with the grown-up she is becoming: