“Skins”
“Skins” is an example of Agbabi’s preferred mode of verse, the dramatic monologue. But it is not exemplary in the sense of being similar to others. The poem is a free-form sestina which seems to be caught in mid-conversation following a sexual encounter. Almost confessional, but not quite, its mysteries and ambiguities are the driving force behind the narrative.
“Eat Me”
A dramatic monologue as extended metaphor. This is the first person recollection of a wife in an abusive relationship that takes an odd form. The key image is the husband buying her a three-icing-layer birthday cake not with the traditional greeting written on top, but instead the words “Eat me.” The key line of the poem is her response:
“And I ate, did
what I was told. Didn’t even taste it.”
The husband glories in her growth until the next birthday when she rolls over on top and stays there until he suffocates.
“The Wife of Bafa”
This poem can be found in a collection that is unified by the thematic conceit of revising, updating and refashioning verse from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales into modern poetry. Like Chaucer’s, it relates the story of a woman who has had multiple husbands. The fifth husband turn into a wife beater when she dares to toss his Playboy magazine into the fire.
“The Joyrider”
This is a monologue spoken by a self-proclaimed “driver at a dead end.” From her jail cell where she’s been charged with multiple vehicular felonies, she complains of missing her mates and recalls faster, much better—much faster—times. Nicknaming herself Mad Maxine one the charges she faces is drug-related. Possession of amphetamines, naturaly.
“Prologue”
This poem introduces the volume titled Transformatrix and reveals the love and power of words and grammar. The speaker makes commands such as “Give me a word” and “Give me a preposition.” Each of these commands is then followed by an explication of what can be done with the tool of language, placing heavy emphasis on the particulars of each command.
“That Four Four Trip”
This poem represents one of the author’s most striking breaks from her preferred manner of structure. Not only is it not a dramatic monologue, it isn’t even structured in traditional verse. It is a prose poem about young acid abusers that not only reads like a short story, but looks like one as well, including dialogue between characters.
“The Tiger”
This selection brings the discussion back to the poet’s indulgences in dramatic monologue. Rather than a quick portrait of a short period of time such as “Skins” or the moment of epiphany and long-delayed action such as that in “Eat Me,” this poem takes a harsh and unflinching look at the long-term consequences of really bad decisions made early in life. The teller of the tale is a woman who lost innocence early and memorialized it with a tattoo of the boy’s name in the way that teenagers do when they believe first love will last forever. The poems concludes with a far different tattoo “stitched hot dark / ink into my taut flesh as time.” The subject of this body art? Cruella De Ville.
