We live in a time in which women’s autonomy, especially bodily autonomy, is the subject of debate and conflict. An optimistic perspective would point out that real progress has been made, and that women probably have more autonomy now than at any point in American history. A more pragmatic perspective would, I think, point out that all of that progress has been made with the shedding of blood, sweat, and tears, fighting against systems and individuals who are more than happy to torture and kill to see their myopic hierarchies enforced, and is so long overdue that its lack of fulfillment is an ongoing insult to all of us. And one consistent facet of that insult is the simple refusal to not only listen to women on an issue like this but to get out of the way and allow them to control the conversation. It is in this context that I have read Show Me The Bells, a collection of poetry by Xochiquetzal Candelaria. And it brings me no small amount of joy to report that this book is not only a wonderful read but a brilliant exploration of change, autonomy, expectations, and love.
“She looks down and lets / me marry her dilated pupils / with mine, even as explosions are / heard in the distance.”
I have no doubt that many reads of this book will focus on motherhood as a dominant thematic element of Candelaria’s poetry, and with good reason. There is a wealth of maternal expression on display here. But I also think that there is a deeper layer to the text, one that explores the idea of the feminine self and how other concepts (including motherhood) relate to and shape it. Candelaria wrestles with the very idea of self on the psychological and physical levels. Her poetic voice speaks of the pull in multiple directions, from the needs of her children to the desires of her partner to the expectations of society to what she envisions in the moment. Her poems dance freely through time, as if she is looking forward and backward through her own story without bothering to keep a finger on any page. There is an almost desperate sensory immersion running throughout the book, lending an intensity tinged with fear of impermanence. It is a deeply humanizing thing to read and relate to, this contradictory and simultaneous yearning for stillness and movement.
“She seems to be breaking through herself, / beyond her shell-like body; she is all becoming, all flash of explosion…”
This contradiction is reinforced by a consistent emphasis on the transitory nature of that feminine self. There is a visceral engrossment in how the body transforms under pressure from biological function, random chance, and psychological pressure (both external and internal). It highlights the body’s astonishing resilience and ability to adapt, but also tacitly acknowledges that such capacity requires irreversible change. This is intimately juxtaposed with the power of the mind, which is often free to, as mentioned above, dance through time. While undeniably part of that physical self, the mind is the means by which we revisit the past and the future, playing witness to the experience of the whole. It is the thing that allows us to understand the contradiction and, perhaps more importantly, the impossibility of “now”.
“Or if we had regularly looked / into the eyes of horses, / lived in their wetness for a while, / celebrated our desire to be still / just as much as our desire to move / up and down, in and out, / to move for the sake of it…”
But I also think there is an important distinction to be made here: Candelaria not only ignores dread, but often rejects it outright. In their back-of-the-book statement about Show Me The Bells, author Donna Masini describes the text as “a lyric cry of possibility for those of us who cannot afford the luxury of despair.” This is, in my opinion, an extremely appropriate description. The kinds of metamorphosis the poetry concerns itself with can be intimidating, dramatically at times, and the pressures that force those changes even more so. But the simple truth is that, in our allegedly progressive society, we do not allow women the “luxury of despair” in the face of the things that happen to them. We treat women as the means by which we achieve our goals, and no small part of the aforementioned resilience and capacity to adapt comes from resisting manipulation and constantly having to establish and protect independence. And, as the poetry lays out in full, the effort to dominate women is both self-destructive and futile.
“I want to be not Eurydice’s fox or snake but the darkness / she moved in, the great living darkness.”
Those of you reading this review can probably hear me describing sentiments that could be applied to the experiences of other disenfranchised groups, at least in the broad strokes, and by no means is Show Me The Bells unaware of these connections. A distinctly Latina heritage permeates the text. seemingly functioning as a source of both pride and humility; pride, in the unique cultural and geographical legacies that give the author such power in their voice, and humility in understanding that that very uniqueness inherently means the author’s experience cannot be universal in scope. When she writes of skylarks by Lago de Texcoco or bells on a paletero’s cart, she reminds us that the physical and psychological experiences she has been describing are happening all around us, constantly, by the Latinas you may have the good fortune of passing on the street.
“The Ma, Ma, Ma, my body uttered in a staccato / like the burbling of Vesuvius before lava and ash / burst out and covered the city in stillness.”
In case it wasn’t obvious by this point, I strongly recommend Show Me The Bells, and not just as a one time experience. The poetry is short but deliciously dense, demanding multiple reads in the best way. It is the kind of collection that can and should make it into your personal rotation, especially when we live in such a reactionary age. It is a book that reveals that all of these contradictions are not really contradictions at all; they are interconnected pieces of a whole, disfigured with arbitrary borders that have been raised to set us in opposition to each other.
Show Me The Bells is available now through Tia Chucha’s Press
