Rendering the Monstrous Moot

Meditating on race and love, Kiki Petrosino's Fort Red Border is a savvy, linguistically nimble, often humorous collection that uses humor's candor to do interesting investigative work into the pressures society exerts on one's private life. She divides this work into three sections, with the first, taking the book's title, presenting a speaker romantically involved with Robert Redford (the section and book's title being an acronym built from his name). The middle section, falling under the heading "Otolaryngology," broadens to ponder race and the speaker's personal/family history more directly. The third, tongue-in-cheekily entitled "Valentine," (all the poems here sharing this title), is presided over by a speaker wiser and worldlier than that of the book's first part, a diva dishing advice as quickly as she defines for herself a hoped-for world.

Think of Fort Red Border as a fugue, its sections taking the roles of [present]/subject, [past]/response, [possible future]/counter subject. In part 1, we're presented a speaker considering (and who sometimes is overwhelmed by) the rapturous advances of at-large American culture (personified by Redford) with all its countless blind spots, coarse ruggedness, and general homogeneity. I'll defend these adjectives below, but to get a taste straightaway, this from the first poem, "Wash":

So I lean back & Redford asks, "Water warm enough?"& I don't answer because I'm holding my breath.I don't know why he asks.He never uses the faucet to shampoo my afro—just an old clay jar.Redford fills the jar at the backyard pump.Then he leaves it in the sun to heat.So it's only going to be so warm by the time it gets to me.That's the point of doing things natural:You get what the sun dishes out, not what you customize….

Part 2 meditates on the speaker's past. Here, we find poems of past-place, past identity, past home life, etc. The poem that does the most reminiscing, and the one that strikes the clearest chord for this section while distinguishing it from the first, is "Gristle":

Uncle tips his plate into the chickenyard. Chicken War beginsdown in the veins & blue leg fat. Scratch.I have a plate.Scratch. Chickens toss skinnybrown I holdmy plate soggedwith grease & dirty chickenbones I atethe yellow meat all from.Go ahead says Uncle.Sure don't like to waste that suredon't like to waste thatsure notme. Now my plate goes.Soft & whiteover the wiretop lookathem says Uncle lookahow birdseat up that chicken.I lookahow birds eat up thatchicken goodGod chickens'll eat up thatchicken girl.Chickens'll eat chickengirl bestcover up those dirtylegs.

Part 3, introducing the aforementioned counter-subject and thus loosely presenting possible futures, (or at least demonstrating the speaker as resisting pressure from the present, past, or world at large) is all "Valentine." The driving motif is that of locating love on the speaker's terms. Here, she'll not have a status-quo love; she'll not have the love and circumstances of her speaker's past, but instead will have a love as can handle her sultry, worldly, intelligent otherness:

Today I got rejected from the Bible.They sent a special envelope, which turned to palm ashwhen I opened it. A whiff of frankincense floated downfrom the wreckage, & a girl's voice said:Thanks for the look.We've no room at present, butYour poems are stylish & convincining.We hope you try us again.Best, AgnesStylish? Convincing? Sounds pretty nice.But riddle me this—Agnes:Why. Does this always. Happen........................................I do need the Bible.It's a personal need, Agnes.You've placed so much of my friends' work........................................I know you're jousting pink unicorns right now.You've got a spray-tan scheduled.Tonight, no doubt you'll sip lime cocktailsin a jacuzzi brimming...