BY JULIE GRAY
Girl With Death Mask, a collection of sometimes searing, sometimes fantastical, always transcendent poems by Jennifer Givhan, is the winner of the 2017 Blue Light Books Prize. The annual prize is offered by IU Press and Indiana Review, a 39-year-old literary magazine edited by Indiana University graduate students. First awarded in 2016, the Blue Light Books Prize alternately commemorates short story and poetry collections, with winners receiving a publication contract and a $2,000 monetary award.
Ross Gay, the much-lauded poet who directs IU’s creative writing program, was the judge of this year’s contest. In the award announcement, Gay commended Givhan’s poems for inventing a new world: “A world haunted and brutal, yes. But one mended, too, by the love and tenderness and vision and magic by which these poems are made.”
Courtesy photo
Givhan, a Mexican American poet who grew up in the desert of the Southwest, was a runner-up for the 2015 prize. She told Indiana Review at the time that she would never tire of writing about “mother/child relationships and that kind of sticky love that keeps us hanging on when we’ve no other reason but love.”
This new collection proves her continued preoccupation with sticky relationships. Her poetry is not only about motherhood, but about the terrors and joys of girlhood and womanhood. The poems concern suicide, miscarriage, rape, child abuse, and abortion—but also celebrate first love, teenage independence, traditional Mexican dishes, and the natural world. It is thus not surprising that her poems would appeal to Gay, whose last poetry collection was titled the Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.
Givhan, too, is grateful for such gifts as Oaxaca-style molé, with its sauce of “tongue-burnt dark chocolate,” and the “wrinkled fruit” of black persimmon trees.
Her blank verse has a pleasing shape on the page. She generally dispenses with punctuation and lets white space create the pauses. The last lines of her poems never end with a closing period, signifying her restless, questing spirit. She will always keep believing, then doubting, then formulating new faiths.
In one poem, she reveals her keen sorrow at the news that a French scientist has proven that the alleged remains of Givhan’s idol Joan of Arc are actually those of a mummy. In another, she wails, “Mama / Your Jesus failed me.” And yet she and the women in her poems are often able to rise again, to discover new loves and new strengths. In one poem, she proclaims “though they thought / I was fly in a web / I was web.”
Despite the ugliness, failures, and sorrows her poems touch upon, they often end with affirmations: “If limbs are made of splintered oars / & hearts of apple blossoms / this world’s for me.”
As a Bloom Magazine web exclusive, here is a selection of four of Jennifer Givhan’s poems from Girl With Death Mask.
Lifeline
From the apartment shadowing our university’s
arboretum evergreens taller
than the freeway overpass a girl
we’d crossed in the quad those orange trees
squat & bright from which we picked
a fruit each & peeled them on the walk back
to our one-bedroom pulp in our teeth that girl
jumped She might have floated
I cut off my hair & you hid
the knives for days the bathtub stopper the cords
You told me you were a time traveler
on borrowed time In bed after my diagnosis
& the voices & the voices I could not
quiet you told me you’d come back
to save me & I threw my wedding
ring out the window I didn’t
need saving & when we climbed
downstairs you dove into the pool
& emerged from the water like a dolphin
meant to fetch gold bands from the deep
For my slit skin you pricked
your own called us blood buddies
& when the babies started bleeding
down my legs you bought me a doll
from the doll hospital I’d told you
I loved as a kid She came with a birth
certificate & blue eyes Her name was Susan
I threw her at you hurled profanities
How could you have been so cruel
You were not cruel You were a time
traveler We are years later sunset
turning the mountains behind our balcony
watermelon cotton candy pink elephant
I am alive I am alive I am
You’d seen your own death She was a girl
like me She was falling She was flying
When I Am Not Joan of Arc or You Bring Me a Bowl of Green & Purple Olives
I am made for our own goddamn kitchen
I’ve wrecked us &
cannot light the stove pilot out
& clicking box of casino matches
my hands juddering Sometimes you carry
watermelon not gently not
to protect it not like a baby & when
you slice I’m aware of the tattoo
you’ve sharpied on your forearm numbers
of blood sugar levels correct doses
of Clozapine & patient names
I need this care the candles you light
my hair caught in the flame remember
our first unholy apartment
we watched another girl like me
learning to fly We thought
she was learning to fall
That ledge remember My novice hope
in tarot my resolve in history in 1867
a French pharmacist claiming
five stoppered bottles contained
the charred bones of my teenage saint remains
of my maiden You held
my hands as the Catholic church accepted
but the bottles were misplaced
they were shelved until a forensic scientist
unpinned them from legend
& tested their promise If I were
the scientist with my white coat & clipboard
I would have done the same
You’ve assured me I’ve ruined myself
with a need for proof A human rib a small
leg bone not human Lord the cat’s broken
femur tarred black The bones couldn’t have been
merely burned The scientist found
bitumen pinewood resin gypsum
Embalming They were mummy bones
Not my sainted girl
schizophrenic heroine but a hoax
I nearly cried when I heard this
Remember You had to stop me
from excavating my own bones
I wasn’t always a nonbeliever Remember
how I wanted the bones
to belong to the dead girl
The Change
When I was still small I began growing antlers
as a stag grows antlers as a girl grows
breasts My chest remained flat & the blood
didn’t come but the velvet skin
sprang spongy behind my temples No one at school
laughed at the antlers like they did when I’d grown
hair under my arms & razor-scraped my shins
to the blood-bright thrill of the locked bathroom door
Mom said she would’ve given me warm
water & lotion if I’d let her in The girls asked could I
pierce my antlers like ears or a nose & if they
hurt The boys asked were they strong enough
to break glass crush tin cans & how long
would they grow The doctor
said to stick out my tongue & drink
peach tea from a soda fountain in the nurse’s
lounge so I could pee in a cup & prove
myself Sometimes a female deer grows
a stub He asked if there was any chance I could be
growing something else I told Mom
there was a boy but it didn’t mean anything
I couldn’t even use a tampon yet
Soon small red birds gathered & settled
as the velvet turned to bone matured into branches
They were too heavy & I knew I had a choice
Mom scoured every myth required
every curandera crack eggs
over my belly rub sagebrush across
my forehead chant & pray One even told me
to sing I could learn to love my antlers or I could
wait see if they fell off on their own see how long
would they stay gone
On Contemplating Leaving My Children
1
I’ve hesitated beside the bosque deep in the cottonwood
told them I will not not again
What sovereign lies What queen in her epistolary cage
An ochre shot glass empties
a lantern unlit heedlessly shines
In vain I have opened mirrors & edges of mirrors
2
A blanket ripped during sleep a dream turns
cold & the body knows
something is wrong Wake up Wake up!
Traveling flatland winter branches praising a slate of sky
I have passed a shotgunned doe
& known bloodred the dying in me
would fight back hunter try her might
3
The church nearby the snow is piled high Something
brightens
in the distance I tread carefully
4
Once I fell into a river but wouldn’t drown
If limbs are made of splintered oars
& hearts of apple blossoms
this world’s for me
