… I want to say / this is how it started: / there was a mystery / it begged / to be stroked
(Alexis De Veaux, “For my love at the time of our ceremony,” Poetry, July-August 2024)

“YxzY” by Ronaldo V. Wilson (Poetry, July-August 2024) is shaped text. It enacts a bulge on the page by means of 30 lines padded with the letter ‘x.’ If you read no further, know that my essential takeaway from the poem — the line I cherish — is this:

[…] to be tested in the wrack wrack of the parlance.

“Test” and “wrack” and “parlance” are germane to the notion of trial by vernacular, ordeal by word. “Wrack wrack of the parlance” crystallizes the attentive deference which a text such as this commands (yes, it says “dwade to the river” and not “wade to the river”).

From the beginning, here are its words:

Is the way xxxxxxxxxxx
B when the meetingxxxxxxx
went down in the square bizxxx
dig my Dream slayin’ imposterxxx
transcripts whip Y flag masterslavex
dialects Drip drip: in a time like the sex
were made fo tastahs choice. xxxxxxxxx

The mention of “dialects” merits attention. Vernacular is evident. The parsing element of my brain wants to make out utterances that may align thus:

Is the way Be [?] when the meeting went down in the square biz [a question?]. Dig [“Observe”?] my Dream-slayin’ imposter transcripts whip Yo [?] flag, masterslave [a command?]. Dialects Drip drip: in a time like the sex were made fo tastahs choice [a statement?].

Interfering with a text in this way is something an author surely hates. It insults scriptural integrity and pokes poetry in the eye, but it’s how the reader with a translator’s vocation rolls. The seeker of an entryway to a walled garden looks for clues: Why is the ‘D’ of “Dream” and the first “Drip” capitalized? Colon after second “drip” noted. (Punctuation is usually helpful.) Look how the line ending in “sex” doesn’t require extra padding. There’s an allusion to Taster’s Choice, a brand of instant coffee. Period after “choice” noted. Allusion to consensual kinky sex posited. Is any of this signally dispositive? Undetermined.

Here’s the rest:

Squid, big up to my ligers in LION-Oxxxxx
YELL-O-FAGE is here, a dewey decimalxx
System, to flow broke, go back to snap chatxx
Attica. A Spun top, up rock — heal the chi’renxx
of my guise man pussy dream chair face squat,xx
& how many Kisses to the center of m Y creamxxx
die dere NordicTrack cuz ain’ much of a wayxxxxx
to be tested in the wrack wrack of the parlance,xx
go parlor game, into your own way into it yo,xxxx
gogoogleogogo parkour weekend in the spy eye,x
go to The Guiding Light — ya need a belt,xxxxxx
and glasses, and tu, you stink, fat, but orange,x
t-sprock. Too much is too much, like gather,xx
the pimpgame. Go dwade to the river of thexx
extant plant the rim shot in the transgibxx
gib dis my language of gong gonxxxxxx
$6.45 for my SBucket no freezexxxx
dried brown worker in a poloxx
Blot twist is the shapexxx
and the formxxxxxx
Is in whitexxxx
My ownxx
ICUxx
X
x
x
x
x
x
x
x

The last word, “ICU,” conjures “intensive care unit.” The manner in which the poem tails off in a sequence of ‘x’s is reminiscent of many a movie scene in which the monitoring device clocking the patient’s vitals fades to a high-pitched drone at the moment of death.

It’s hard to tell whether ‘YxzY’ is spangly or hirsute. Two things: I challenge you to say its title spontaneously without stumbling. The reflex to maintain the letters in ‘XYZ’ order asserts itself. And it occurred to me belatedly that the title may have a chromosomal vibe to it, with ‘z’ as the nonconforming element. Never mind that now; it recedes in hindsight. To forge a connection with the text I had to start writing about it from the outset. I’ve tossed out almost everything I tried to say, having remembered that reading is mostly listening.

(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved