Wasp Queen by Claudia Cortese (review)

Claudia Cortese's debut poetry collection Wasp Queen pulls us through the sticky, dark miracle of a coming-of-age narrative. The protagonist, Lucy, forges and falters through the unrelenting darkness that winds through the suburban landscape of her youth. With Lucy, we find ourselves not only affected by but also implicated by the pain and darkness that power these poems in a way that can only be described as the duende. The concept of duende, which translates literally as "ghost" or "goblin," refers to a quality of inspiration, passion, or spirit. It is a mysterious power, of which the poet Federico Garcia Lorca says, "everything has duende in it." The duende can lend a miraculous feeling of creation to work, though not all poems—and not even all good poems—capture such a spirit. Poet Tracy K. Smith describes writing the duende as a struggle to "survive in two worlds at once," in both the world we see and also a world beyond it. To write from the duende is to create a hinge where these two worlds meet, showing the reader something shocking in an otherwise familiar scene. In Wasp Queen, Cortese creates such a hinge in her fraught, sometimes desperate poems.

One of the earliest poems places us in the all too familiar context of a shopping mall. "The First Mall" begins by explaining what the inventor wanted for such a place: "a place for birds and best friends and the clean hope of brotherhood in America." We learn that Frank Lloyd Wright called the mall "evil," further unbalancing our expectations.

This exposition comes as backdrop for a Lucy narrative, as she spends every Friday at her local mall. Despite the "mall slides" and Orange Julius, she faces abuse in this place: "When a boy says, 'That girl has bee stings covering her face' while pointing in your direction, something formless and like blades secrets beneath skin." Hate festers along with "a feeling like fungus . . . not pain but its stupid runt sister." This feeling is compared to menstruation, the blood that our speaker says "stickies my thighs and I realize it's not sweat but I left my Tampax at home so I fold toilet paper squares thickly and neatly in a stall" and prays "that no one smells how dirty I am." This feeling of being powerless to the changing body—of feeling separate from the limbs and flesh that has housed you your entire life—coupled with the syntax and tone of an angsty, self-conscious teenager in a public space brings this poem home. It's a particular moment, but it's indicative of a larger societal critique. Cortese shows us the current of cruelty—that underworld—running just below the surface of the domestic.

In poems like "Lucy Mad Libs," Cortese experiments with form, taking familiar forms and destabilizing them. In this poem, a childhood game is collapsed with childhood trauma: "She hates herself because _____ (proper noun)" and "She tears hair-roots, sticks marbles where she pees because _____ (i.e., basement water)." Though it's formally wide open, this poem stares fiercely at so many specific details. Lucy, unable to perform the feminine, unable to cope with the constant abuse, acts out. We are implicated: Lucy "crowbars a pet turtle from its shell, safety pins her thumb-skin because _____ (you know the answer)." This heart-wrenching situation can be written only with open-endedness, and Cortese finds it—using her tools in decidedly different, ways.

Throughout Wasp Queen, we're forced to witness Lucy's survival mechanisms in full force: sometimes endearing, sometimes painful. To endure, Lucy takes action, drinking stolen vodka, eating "the cherry heart the black O at television's center," eating raw salmon and Reddi-wip, and attaching plastic devil horns to her forehead using Krazy Glue. These actions result in her alienation, not only from the community of girls her age but—heartbreakingly—from her own family, a mother who won't hug her and an uncle who secretly abuses her.

Ducking from the painful world...