Black Bough

Book of the Month

November 2023

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Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs

 

 by Karen Pierce Gonzalez

 

 

 

Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs, Karen Pierce Gonzalez, Kelsay Books.

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Review 1 - by Glenn Barker.

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How do you navigate the terrain of traumatic loss, as a child, when all around you have shut down your only pathway to comfort and meaning? In this chapbook, San Francisco poet Karen Pierce Gonzalez takes us through that trauma wilderness, a landscape cloaked in the flat features of winter; cold, stark and unfamiliar.

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The poet embraces the mythology of Coyote to find meaning in her profound and brutally painful loss - that of her younger sister.  It is the unique insight of her conversations with Coyote in her dream-state that builds understanding between them, and peace within her grieving heart. Coyote dream-spirit becomes her companion and her ally; her silent voice of healing.

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‘Coyote Dream I’, first contact, opens a bristling sense-dialogue with this spirit anima, inner conflict with her abandoned heart, and a recognition of something calling to notice this enigmatic trickster-ally: ‘Fitful, in a den of sleep, / taut Coyote muscles twitch / beneath my skin. Spine arches. / I pull blankets back.

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‘A Photo Marked Only Kids, 1963’ relates the traumatic death of her sister. It is raw, yet poignant, in the child's-eye vision of her sister’s ascent to heaven: ‘That morning my sister / was placed in a pauper’s plot, […] I see her. In the corner / of this black and white image, / the shadowed wingspan of a bird flying off’.

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In alternating between real-state (loss) and dream-state (restoration) we read how Coyote begins to lead her through the wilderness as teacher: ‘Alone, making breakfast, I whisper. ‘ / Make friends with pine and redwood.’ […] ‘where Coyote / attuned to even the slightest sound / will find food’.

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Then, we are wrenched back home, the shatter-point of glass; Karen has become un-adopted, left to die inside. And in ‘Scorched’, we read of the disconnected ‘it’, the crash scene horror where ‘metal crunch equals death instant’.

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Her only emotional link and comfort in the home is Chatty Cathy, her sister’s talking doll. We read the agony of silent, inanimate, yet intimate communion with her sister: ‘When my sister died, / the doll, vocal cord worn out, / went into the closet. Grew dusty, / until, parents gone, I dug her out.’

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‘Ferryman of Hades’ describes the heartbreaking abandonment of her mother’s love and care, as she too has died inside from trauma: ‘[Charon] sees she has left you behind. / Motherless, not ready / to feed, clothe, and / make shelter. / The boat master watches / you survive / the thirty-plus years / she huddles, numb, by his feet.’

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The final real-state and dream-state poems lift us into the arms of restoration, hidden between the folds of reason and emotion. In ‘Taking the Plunge’ she returns to the natural landscape, and revelation: ‘my heart jumps / before words can explain / the leap…it dives / into the rush of westerly winds / and the cold, crisp splash / of waking up’. And in ‘Coyote Dream X’ lies the unspoken end-point of knowing: ‘Coyote…glances back at me before / nuzzling her narrow nose into the spicy herb leaves / where, in ceremony, I first found her / cradled inside the basket of my ribs’.

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What has been taught and what matters is the rekindling of enduring bonds with her sister; love and memories that can be carried forward in the basket of Karen’s ribs.

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Grief is an elusive and abrasive cold fog, the empty cavity of a misplaced heart.  Karen Pierce Gonzalez shows us the power of her mythological archetype, Coyote, to lead her out of the fog by example and play to negotiate the paradox of her sharp void. The appearance of Coyote, whether real or imagined, becomes her refuge and her teacher, healing her wild inside with adaptability, resilience and inner strength; mirroring Coyote in its own wild outside.

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This is an utterly moving work that comes highly recommended.

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Glenn A. Barker

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Glenn, a latecomer to poetry, started writing during the pandemic silence and confinement. He is drawn to the edges of what we see that transcends explanation; the separate realities that lie just beyond perception; and the dynamics of the human psyche, in a futile attempt to understand his own mind and the world beyond. Born in Worcestershire, he now lives in South Yorkshire. He has been published The Broken Spine, Dreich, Fevers of the Mind, The Wombwell Rainbow and Wildfire Words. He is a regular contributor to TopTweetTuesday. His Twitter handle is @Glenn_A_Barker

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Review 2 by Matthew M. C. Smith

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Coyote in the Basket of my Ribs, by San Francisco poet Karen Pierce Gonzalez, is a truly unique collection - superlatives really don’t do the work justice. The poems focus on the trauma of the death of the poet’s mother and younger sister in a car accident when the writer, herself, was a child.

 

This is one of the most moving collections of poetry I have read and it impacted me on the deepest of emotional levels with dream-filled, subliminal poems of the poet’s sister, interspersed with direct, personal poems about confusion, absence, loss and grief; turbulent emotions experienced by someone so young and the skill  of the poet is to take us into the complex mind of the bereaved child. Moments where your mouth goes dry or you get the chills. 

 

Let the trauma not put you off the book because, fundamentally, these are beautiful poems displaying real flair in poetic phrasing and use of metaphor. The haunting becomes is its own form of magic as the spirit-animal, the coyote that is a metaphor for her sister’s spirit, shifts through dreams, reveries and life events, always there, always following – “Not every pocket of inner wilderness is meant to stay wild, is it?”, one of the poetic speakers reflects.

 

There are moments of jolting shock in the book:

 

that morning my sister

was placed in a pauper’s plot,

four rows up from a statue of lambs

with Jesus who wasn’t her shepherd. ('Coyote Dream I')

 

The starkness of the work is weighted with poignancy:

 

But I see her. In the corner

of this black and white image,

the shadowed wingspan

of a bird flying off  ('A Photo Marked Only Kids, 1963')

 

before the camera’s lens could catch her.

 

The biting grief and confusion is palpable in the following poem:

 

It has been weeks since Coyote

slipped out of my fenced-in

days that now begin

with longing for her,

a carnivore who cut her teeth

on the raw edges of my heart,

crimping the protective

outer layer like it

were pie crust. ('Coyote Dream II')

 

Through the skill of the poet, the alchemy of the word, the spirit-animal is released out into the wider world, to us as readers – and we, in turn, become haunted by this shadowy, yet vital, presence - “She prefers uneven edges of nightfall./ Its darkness dissolves the calm/ of my certainty about which shadows/ are tame enough to clothe and feed,/ to give pen, paper, and paintbrush to.”

 

Each time I have read this book, it's made me cry. The sister as an imaginary, transforming friend is presented through the child’s eyes and it is this young voice that gives the poems such emotional resonance.

 

This morning I pat the quilt

for paw prints, anything,

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to tell me, after hunting

her new country in a seasonal coat

 

I cannot brush or stroke,

Coyote still knows where her home is.  ('Coyote Dream III)

 

Reflecting on this work, I am reminded of the Welsh writer, Alun Lewis, and his suggestion that poetry should be ‘what survives of the beloved’. This is a wild and sacred work presenting the after lives of precious people in the imagination. It should be read widely as a brilliant insight into a child’s mind and how poetry always starts with the transformative power of the imagination.

 

I leave you with this poem by Karen Pierce Gonzalez.

 

Childhood Home

 

Happily-ever-after did not

paper the walls. Pencils

did not mark inches grown,

or the spine’s curve

bending right when, at 9,

I learned there were only

barbed angles in this house,

a skewered patchwork

of heated arguments, splintered

door frames, tainted truths,

and a roof that leaked

every time I cried.

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Matthew M. C. Smith is the author of The Keeper of Aeons and editor of Black Bough.

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