Mama Amazonica by Pascale Petit (review)

Pascale Petit's allegorical collection, Mama Amazonica, transports us to a psychedelic psychiatric ward in the Amazon Rainforest. In order to fully experience Petit's sixty-three poems, strict rules of "what is possible" must be dismissed. Her collection transforms reality into a fantastical display of absurdity as animals come to the vivid forefront with anthropomorphic details. A scan of the table of contents reveals characters such as "Mama Amazonica," "Jaguar Girl," "Mama Oceana," "Macaw Mummy," "Jaguar Mama," and "Snow Leopard Woman," to name a few. Dominant female roles set the stage for life and death by recounting a story of light into darkness.

Petit's title poem "Mama Amazonica" opens her collection. The extended poem is written in four parts and coos in couplets as the female protagonist is born and begins her transformation:

Picture my mother as a baby, afloaton a waterlily leaf,

a nametag round her wrist–Victoria amazonica

The diction is soft when the complicated character is introduced. The setup of her innocence is crucial in order to achieve attachment to Victoria. As she floats down rapids the forest accepts her as her journey goes unnoticed: "a sloth clings to the cecropia tree, / a jaguar sniffs the bank." Her birth is not seen as a disturbance until it is made one by doctors, "My newborn mama, / washed clean by the drugs." Victoria becomes a caged animal born into a life in the wild.

Petit's poem "Precious Goliath Beetle" creates an army of spy beetles in eighteen precise words:

Beetles with intricatecameras mountedon their carapaces

record every harmthat comes to herin diamantine detail.

Closely resembling two haikus, this tiny poem of witness reveals human pain. These giant insects morph into the paparazzi of the Amazon Rainforest as they robotically "record" inflicted tragedy. The idea of witness becomes its own character as the expected "harm" takes over the victim: there is no balance between good and evil, but a will to survive.

Petit's poem "Macaw Mummy" is an extended dark metaphor for her mentally ill mother. The poem presents insight on the cause for her distress, rape by an unknown man:

What did he put in her drink?Whatever it was has given her

a dream she can't escape from,however much she wills

Though the collection is full of fantasy, it touches on shocking truths of life. The theme of being a prisoner trapped inside one's own body repeats itself and becomes heart breaking. Another example of imprisonment and rape is the poem "Taxidermy." In five non-rhyming couplets a moment of quiet is felt among the chaos. The poem acts as an elegy for Victoria's physical body though she is still alive:

His sheets smell of formalin.She feels as if her insidesg are outside her, in a freezer.Instead of a heart

she now has cotton wool

The image of an animal carcass on a hospital bed darkens the mood of the poem. There is irony as the spirit of Victoria is conscious as she lives through the taxidermy process. Petit is able to pump life into a heart stuffed with wool.

The complexities of motherhood and physical abuse are woven through as a repetitive theme. The poem "Madre de Dios," which translates to "Mother of God," explicitly states the unspeakable act "while she who gave birth to me / after she was raped by a man." Victoria's own birth was presented as feminine and peaceful as she floats down the Amazon. Deeply contrasted Victoria becomes a mother through acts of violence as she is surrounded by darkness and torture. Her tortured pain is felt through Petit's words.

It is impossible to ignore the science fiction quality in Petit's poem "The Birth of Jaguar Girl." The first stanza is like a scene from the silver screen:

You come out hissing,bite off your own chord,gobble the afterbirth

and lick me off your fur.

The cub is infused with the same hatred and angst of the mother. She leaves the womb full of...