A Bestiary
Lily
Hoang. CSU Poetry Center, $16 paperback (156p) ISBN: 9780996316743
In “The Animal Mode of Inescapable
Shock,” Anne Boyer writes, “If an animal is shocked, escapably or inescapably,
she will manifest deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her. If
she has manifested deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her,
she will manifest deeper reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her
and then dragged her off the electrified grid. Perhaps she will develop deep
feelings of attachment for electrified grids. Perhaps she will develop deep
feelings of attachment for what is not the electrified grid. Perhaps she will
develop deep feelings of attachment for dragging. She may also develop deep
feelings of attachment for science, laboratories, experimentation, electricity,
and informative forms of torture.”
In her book-length collection of
essays, A Bestiary, Lily Hoang
explores this complicated relationship between abuse, attachment, affection,
and autonomy. Juxtaposing fragments of the author’s personal life and other
ephemera, Lily Hoang weaves together images of rats, tigers, fairy tales, a
dead sister, Asian/Orientalism, time, an abusive ex-husband (a self-described
anarchist who demands alimony), myth, memory, an occasionally lying,
occasionally cheating lover, family etched onto the body, feminism, teaching,
an addicted nephew, violence, compulsion, and one night of hedonistic pleasure
with an old school friend. This structure, like Tender Points by Amy Berkowitz or The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, works best when the fragments speak
to each to create a whole, something larger than the sum of its parts. Hoang’s A Bestiary accomplishes this through
both subtle and clever means.
The
book is broken up into sections, each a loose thematic collection: on the Rat Race, on Catastrophe, on
Measurement, on the Geography of
Friendship. Some sections sprawl across fifteen, twenty pages, allowing the
fragments to speak to each other in surprising ways:
Before I found
her seizing on the floor of her bedroom, before she died, I watched my sister
polish off a ninety-count bottle of Hydros. She gave her son Justin some, but
the rest she ate as if garnished with the finest sea salt. She doesn’t die of
overdose, but she dies.
My doctor ups my dosage of Xanax. There
are too many things I can’t think about.
***
Dionysus
is the god of epiphany, the god who comes.
***
The only time
Harold kisses me the way Jacob does was after rough anal sex. “I feel like I just raped you,” he said
afterwards.
Other sections are shorter, like the
tight, controlled section entitled on
Violence:
on Violence
Once, my
father's friend, the Skinny Man, brought over a dead goat. He had hit it with
his mini-van. My father helped him bring it in because it was too heavy for one
man to carry alone, but they sent me to my room first. I had never seen a goat
before—not up close—but I didn't argue. I didn't fight. I was just a kid then,
still sleeping with my mother even though I was too old for that. I played
house with marbles; they rolled and sat and drank tea out of tiny plastic cups.
Later, the men
will drink beer and eat stewed goat.
Later, when I am
taking a bath, the Skinny Man will come in and wash his hands, and I will watch
how lathering makes bubbles and how quickly the water washes it all away. I
will not look at his eyes in the mirror's reflection. The marbles will be slick
with soap.
As
the book’s title suggests, there is no shortage of beasts in this book, both
animal and human. The humans in this book treat each other badly and then try,
sometimes, to do better. They struggle
against addiction and their own asshattery; they feel the pull of family like
thread sewn just beneath skin. They
drive 500 miles to visit their lover who lies. They themselves lie. They burrow into friendships, into teaching,
into fairy tale and myth. And alongside the humans, the beasts roam, both
symbol and salve. Rats run mazes and press levers, tigers haunt villages, goats
are both feast and sacrifice, rabbits perform cunning tricks, and in the Great
Race, the pig always, always finishes last. (April 2016)
Reviewer
bio: Melissa Reddish is the author of The
Distance Between Us (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2013) and My Father
is an Angry Storm Cloud: Collected Stories (Tailwinds
Press, 2015). Her stories, poems, and reviews have appeared in print and
online journals. She teaches and directs the Honors Program at Wor-Wic
Community College on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When not writing or
teaching, she likes to do stereotypical Eastern Shore things, like eat crabs
smothered in Old Bay and take her Black Lab for long walks by the river. Girl & Flame, a hybrid novella, is
forthcoming from Conium Press in 2016.
