Deadpan
poems by
K.A. HoltISBN 13: 978-1-59948-089-3
~90 pages, $12***This title was selected for publication after finishing as a finalist in the 2007 MSR Poetry Book Award contest. ***
About the Author / Comments / Sample
K.A. Holt lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband. She received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of North Texas and an M.F.A. from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. Her work has appeared in journals such as Allegheny Review, American Literary Review, and Fugue. In addition to writing poetry, she works with volunteers at her local public library. This is her first collection of poetry.
There isn’t a mirror big enough in this godforsaken town, says the speaker in K A Holt’s “Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman,” to show me my whole new self. That’s the kind of Texas sass informs this engaging, funny, and formally inventive first book, in which a strong, undeceived woman casts an eye on Walmart, Sunday school, the movies, ventriloquists’ dummies, and much more of the strange landscape of these States—beloved, difficult country.
—Mark Doty
K.A. Holt’s Deadpan conjures a crowd of speakers—a Sunday school student, a frustrated mother at a Wal-Mart, a slick of oil, the 50 Ft. Woman, even a ventriloquist named Victor and his dummy Frank—that fill this terrific debut with humor, surprise and an engaging sense of range.
—Corey Marks
Author of Renunciation
LADIES' ROOM
I. THE BEST WAY TO A MAN'S HEART IS
TO SAW THROUGH HIS BREASTPLATE
Honey, if you really want to see it,
get some surgical tools.
You'll need a bone saw, and don't forget
the latex gloves and to cover everything
in the kitchen with sheets
of plastic. It isn't hard.
Just spike the drink he clinks
his ice in every evening. Lay him
out on the table, get to sawing.
Soon, the mystery will be over.
What's there will surprise you.
You imagine it is axle grease
and a lump of sawdust from the damn
boat he's been working on, a soggy
black-and-white photo of his mother
as a girl, the broken model of a '57 Chevy,
a dog-eared paperback spy novel,
a lock of red hair from his prom date,
his first puppy's old jangling collar,
yellowed newspapers, a mini TV.
It isn't any of these. It's blood
and muscle and pumping-
something you have to see yourself
to believe.
II. WALK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG PURSE
I mean something heavy
that would give a purse snatcher
a hernia. Something with buckles
to make a mark when you smack
it upside his head. Carry something
that means business, with hidden
pockets to hold mace or breath mints,
your diaphragm. My mother
called her purse a black hole
for lipsticks and toothpicks.
She could never find what she needed
but believed it would be there
if she just kept digging.
Something else got lost in it, too,
but I haven't the faintest idea
what it was-old Southern charm
or smelling salts, good handkerchiefs
embroidered with your initials or magnolia
blooms, a picture of your Daddy
in uniform, or just the idea that a big
purse said something about you--
that you were prepared for any emergency.
Now we carry tiny bags--beaded clutches
we can't even cram our wallets into,
cute purses with dainty straps that snap
under the weight of what we need
so we're always bending down
for spilt pills, cracked compacts,
a worn-down emery board.
III. YOU CAN'T PICK A WALLFLOWER
is what my mother said
as I left for the prom sans date.
But I had no intention of being one.
In the store's good light
my new dress was the perfect shade
of pale green-like lake water
glinting in twilight or the pale belly
of a fish swimming there.
It was a color natural enough
to stand out in their sea
of fuchsia and electric purple,
something soft in all that classic black
and white, all that hooker red.
But in the semi-dark of the gym,
my dress was the exact sick shade
of the mint green state surplus paint
they'd sloshed the walls with.
I bloomed all night-the wall sprouting
my wan face, my thin corsage-less
arms. I was glued there, waiting
for those moments the mirrored ball
swayed wide enough to catch the hem
of my dress so a dime-sized shape
of it gleamed a shade brighter.
IV. MY MOTHER MADE ME A WHORE
accidentally. I know she must
have been lonely and it helped
having me around to dress up.
Afternoons in front of her mirror
she'd stain my lips with her bold
shades-Sexy, Vixen, Pout.
It was only play for her, but I
couldn't get enough of it and spent
naptime poring over fashion mags
and that stack of Playboys Dad
left behind in dusty shoeboxes.
Soon I begged for an Epi-Lady
and a training bra, and I sought
out every mall beauty pageant
in the tri-county area. She frowned
the first time she saw me smear
my teeth with Vaseline, force a smile
for all those balding men
in tweed jackets peering
over their bifocals, examining
my curtsy, judging my skill
on the stage in tiny white heels.
They looked right past her-
the grown woman in a miniskirt,
lipstick flaking in the corners
of her down-turned mouth.
Our mantle got loaded with trophies-
Little Miss Supreme Darling, etc.,
and I shudder to think what
Mom must've been doing
those afternoons by the time
I traded in that little girl undershirt
for real cups trimmed in black
lace and fell into all their hairy
arms, whispered to them in their stuffy
offices, too-hot cars, rented rooms,
say I'm pretty, say I'm lovely, say
you like the way I walk.
Oh, I walked slow away from them
imagining them imagining her--
how we look the same from behind.
V. IF YOU'RE READING THIS I'M SORRY
your husband left you for his secretary.
I'm that secretary, and, you're right, I wear
too much makeup and not enough blouse.
I apologize. And that boating accident
that killed your father-it was me waterskiing
in the red bikini who caught his eye. I beg
your pardon. Listen, it's my fault
you're always out of change on laundry day
and when you need to park downtown.
I steal your coins when you aren't looking
and wait until you're going to the motor bank.
I'm that car in front of you rolling slowly
and always losing count. I'm sorry, too,
you can't find the right shoes for that dress
hanging limp in your closet. I went ahead
and asked the saleslady for those perfect
purple pumps in your ridiculous size. She's
holding them for me under a fake name. I'm sorry
it's so hard to read this, but I'm the management,
and it's my job to order whitewash sloshed
over everybody's scrawling in the stalls.
It doesn't mean I don't spend hours poring
over it first, that I don't take time to respond,
that I don't cry sometimes at what I find.
THE POET'S MOTHER'S DISCLAIMER
I stopped reading her poems because I was tired of blushing. She didn't get that colorful vocabulary from me. I tried my darndest to scrub it out of her when she was five by making her eat soap for something nasty she said (I won't repeat it) about the broccoli I'd made for dinner. Five full minutes I made her suck on that bar of Dial, but, she wasn't deterred. The next time I served what she claimed smelled like feet I got a toothbrush, some Palmolive, and I scrubbed her gums, tongue, and teeth-her whole nasty mouth. But, soon, she learned to write, and I'd find little slips of paper scrawled with single nasty words folded into sixteenths and shoved into Dad's socks, my coin purse, under couch cushions, inside the hidden drawers of jewelry boxes, bound up with her little ponytail holders and secreted all over the house. Needless to say, I never bought her a diary. So, if you feel faint or nauseous when you thumb through her book, it isn't my fault, despite what you hear these days-on talk shows, in self-help books. Just blame the mother. I smothered her or else I didn't give her enough attention. I didn't breastfeed, or I breastfed too long. There's too many ways you can fail. And it's the same with her-just because you let is slip once in a mall dressing room looking for a swimsuit when she was 13 that you thought her rear end was getting a little round, you'll always be the one who called her fat. But does she ever write about that first fragile year of her life I spent stooped over her crib while she squawked with colic and I hummed a song I couldn't remember the words to, praying she'd finally sleep? Does she tell you that, though she's across town and in bed with a man almost as old as her father, I pray every night for her? Lord, bless her heart. Bless her black little heart.