Crocodiles Poems by Martha Boss

 

Poet Martha Boss

 
 

Crocodiles

Poems by Martha Boss

BOSSPRESS

22 Pages

Price: negotiable

Review by Dennis Daly

Even the title of this enchanted canvas-covered chapbook by Martha Boss comes alive with unruly brashness. The second “c” in Crocodiles has moved over and embraced the second “o” creating what looks like a rebellious liaison that bubbles forward into the book proper. Retro typos like this happen in the alternative production universe of the Hermes Rocket typewriter, circa 1987, used by Boss to manually type out each finished and unique page.

Big subjects like war and peace Boss delves into with gonzo gusto. In her opening poem, Domestic War Declaration, she internalizes the struggle for poetic expression in biological terms. The poet makes contradictory points in an ever contrasting, yet surprisingly sophisticated, context,

i want that tissue of

inspiration.

i don’t want holy crap

occupying my forever

terroristic globe

my cerebrum my lobes my

hemispheres my cranium of wars.

i want peace for my faculties.

peace. after trillions of

cells have clashed &

collapsed.

then i want them to get up

& start trouble all over again.

Many of Boss’ poems begin with homespun observations, lulling the reader with over simplified logic. In the meantime each line adds accoutrements of detail, building into an elegant but wickedly funny metaphor. Boss’ piece Bad Poem progresses like that. A black ant crosses a cement walk. The poet stirs in traits of focus and determination and then, with a wink, conjures up her infernal vision. Consider these lines leading to an arms race,

…black ants with stingers.

these nano batteried pests

could, in the right hands,

& equipped with just

the right insecticide

drive an enemy crazy.

that is, until the enemy

got their own.

Crocodiles, the title poem, opens definitively with the poet admitting, “I don’t like crocodiles.” That may be true but the cover of this chapbook with its geometric designs looks suspiciously crocodilish. As Boss follows the escape saga of a crocodile from the Gaza zoo and its life on the lam, her irrepressible wit takes over and the poem turns political with a vengeance. Boss concludes the piece with some pretty funny lines that do nothing if not clarify,

in a way

the crocodile

is an enviable creature

pure & simple.

malice is not

a forethought

or an afterthought.

it likes to

slosh around

in your dirty water

& eat yr pets.

& it doesn’t say

It did it

For peace.

Petty bureaucrats beware. Boss has your number. Indeed, in a poem wonderfully titled Uh Oh Here She Comes, the poet nails her subject. Without doubt this is my favorite poem in the collection. The piece begins at the chapbook’s center where the staples, hidden by green twine, secure the pages. As the poem’s anxious protagonist awaits judgment humbly, an inspector of apartments, sent by the city housing department, checks the closets and the drawers, and exhibits the superior air common to many operatives from the lower rungs of officialdom. Boss details the inspection procedure with humor and consternation, and balances the two perfectly. Here’s a bit of the description from the heart of the poem,

she has her big clip board

& big pen.

she opens & closes & peeps

& peers.

she looks like, & i have 

endowed her with, all the

attributes of the chinese

communist police.

she has precise puppet

movements & a very pointy

forefinger.

i have a very funny feeling.

After hearing that Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream, sold for 130 million dollars, Boss ponders the logic and importance of repressed language in her poem entitled Scream. With just a dash of wit the poet describes the artistic conundrum in words both childlike and profound,

2 short screams mean just in

case you didn’t know it i’m here.

1 medium scream is i’ll

probably need you to play with me.

one long scream is no, you’re

not doing it right. the block

goes here.

some people become expert

at not saying

what should be said.

some become congressmen.

how often we are

governed by words

that replaced the sound

that could have been

a famous painting.

Like most consumers Boss celebrates gadgets that work. Her poem I’m Wearing a New Watch drives home a capitalistic point of personal pride as well as the importance of good maintenance that supports systems which numerous dependents rely on—such as an elevator. Screechy ones just won’t do. Got it? Well, I didn’t. Boss’ persona then takes a left turn while speaking to an elderly couple on an elevator she shares with them and joins them in an ideological collaboration. The poet expresses her doubts and arguably invents a new right for human kind. Boss continues her narration,

i say” it doesn’t sound good.”

they both say, “no, not good.”

the three of us.

all for one.

freedom from being stuck

in what doesn’t work .

machines

& ideologies.

i’m grateful for my

comrades in conscience.

Did Boss really call them “comrades?” She does sneak up on you with her more serious verses. The poet concludes the same poem this way,

they smile.

smiles of wisdom

with age.

i smile.

i show them.

my watch,

made in china.

Boss’ poems remind me of the English poet Stevie Smith. Not the style or the formal manner, but the temperament. Both can twist their readers into cognitive pretzels. Boss reads her pieces at low key venues in Cambridge (usually Stone Soup) and Somerville. Her self-constructed books (now collectors’ items) she stashes away unless asked. Do ask. You’ll thank yourself later.

The Truth About Ed Meek’s Spy Pond By Teisha Dawn Twomey

The Truth About Ed Meek’s Spy Pond

By Teisha Dawn Twomey

In his book “The Triggering Town,” Richard Hugo advises those seeking advice on writing, “you owe reality nothing and the truth about your feeling everything.” What Ed Meek accomplishes in his skillfully  crafted and well-seasoned collection “Spy Pond” is to connect his reader to intellectual and emotional matters in an honest, candid manner that engages us in their universality. In this way, he provides his reader with an unbounded versatility of mind that becomes the doorway into the more collective conscience. Meek preoccupies our mind with both the supernatural and natural, personal, national, and worldwide disasters, matters of our mortality, it’s heaviness but also it’s fragility, the revenge exacted by a forsaken ecosystem, the justice system, science and technology, and the lingering sense that we will feel comforted, if not by understanding, then through ascribing meaning to the issues that most trouble us.

At times, Meek’s poems express feelings of modern day ennui and a dissatisfied posture regarding the experience of the self in an indifferent world. “Spy Pond” has a willingness to ask the difficult questions and to point out the indifferent and the dishonorable, as if to shake the bored suburbanite out of his or her self-indulgent languor. This poet blows the lid off the suffering and pain of his fellow man, unafraid to strike the bone of contention in this nation. He makes it impossible to ignore or dehumanize the victim. The guilt and lingering sense that life is far more unfair to some, is an issue the reader must cope with, at least while reading. How we each begin to reconcile with this realization (or perhaps the powerful reminder) in the aftermath, is our business, but the author lays all of his own cards on the table and calls a spade a spade. 
 

Ed Meek’s “Spy Pond” speak it’s own truth, candidly and with determination. It has great compassion, limiting judgement or pretense by, instead, asking empathetic questions and allowing the reader space to come to their own conclusions. The author’s willingness, or rather determination, to take risks is beautifully captured in this brave and contemplative collection of poems. The fact that the aha-moments of Meek’s disclosures allow us to feel as if we have arrived at these crisp and concise moments of sudden epiphany naturally, is not a mistake. It is due to Meeks perceptively unpretentious and candid voice, that he is so successful embracing the reader and that as the collection develops or rather unfolds, the hidden truths we uncover feel like our own. 
 

“Spy Pond” is full of sharp wit and the words clearly demonstrate a profound understanding about what it is that we all care about, what compels each of us. Meek's poems never bite off more than they can chew, nor do they hit the reader over the head with a point too many times. Instead, a newcomer to the knowledge Meek presents, is extended with a manner of discerning foresight, that leaves the reader with the sense that the poet is not overly concerned with whether or what the reader does or does not know. Instead, Meek’s collection creates the impression that the writer has trusted the reader, assuming that he or she has enough good sense and to fill in any gaps and/or read between the lines to reach their own thoughtful conclusions. The failing to leave well enough alone and to instead go overboard overexplaining, as if trying to persuade the readers of some allusion, is an ailment many novice writers suffer from. If left unidagnosed and untreated, what would otherwise be successful work is destroyed by it’s very own lack of faith. In contrast, Meek has a distict gift for appearing to cinch the right words the first time through and leaving an impression that delivers his reader towards their significance and the consequences thereof. This, of course, is done by virtue of our own lens of perception, which is at all times at the mercy of context. Invariably our frame of reference will effect how each of us interprets Meek’s poetry. This inner-toolbox, that defines everything we think we know, will vary, as will our ability to expand our perceptions and elevate our understanding towards more meaning and purpose. It is this, in the end, that makes “Spy Pond” or any other successful work of literary art great; it’s ability to give birth to new or reawakened truths.


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Teisha Dawn Twomey is the poetry editor at Night Train, as well as an associate fiction editor for Wilderness House Literary Press. She received her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous print and online poetry reviews and journals. By day, she is the Resource Specialist at Springfield College's Boston campus and by night she wishes she was a superhero.

Teisha Dawn Twomey is the poetry editor at Night Train, as well as an associate fiction editor for Wilderness House Literary Press. She received her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous print and online poetry reviews and journals. By day, she is the Resource Specialist at Springfield College's Boston campus and by night she wishes she was a superhero.