By Jessica Colleen McDermott
Harvest, Utah poet Brittney Allen’s first poetry book reads like a magnifying glass that inspects and uncovers the most hidden and private aspects of intimacy and abuse. At once it is wholly personal and sadly universal in its portrayal of childhood abuse and its lasting trauma that lingers into adulthood. It would be unfair, however, to say that the book is only about abuse as its pages are more aptly about the violence rendered, not only physically but emotionally, on ones identity from sexual abuse and more importantly, the journey of self-discovery and healing afterwards.
The book as a whole speaks to anyone who has ever felt their power ripped from their hands, and akin to confessional poets like Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, or Marie Howe, the poems’ speaker centers on the personal and emotional aspects of womanhood and what it means to be a wife, or a sister, and the trappings of love in a male-dominated world.
In the first poem of the collection, the title poem, we return to childhood by entering a cornfield. Quickly, however, it becomes clear that this isn’t a poem of hide-and-seek but rather one of predator and prey. Even before a description of the abuse rendered in the field is revealed, the reader can sense danger. The first few lines read,
“My family split up in the cornfield.
God knows why. I called my stepfather
Daddy at eleven years old,
paired off with him in the maze.”
Later on in the poem when “his stone hand reaped my chest— / the year’s fruit in his palm,” we begin to see themes of childhood, sexuality, and coming of age, and we quickly learn that the poem and book title mean a harvest of a body, a child’s body, and the aftermath of a forced reaping.
The poems in Harvest transverse metaphorical and physical landscapes and engage with our innermost fears surrounding abuse, love, and sexuality. One example of this are the To My Husband poems, a thread throughout the book, where the speaker attempts to make sense of her role as wife and lover as well as a survivor of abuse. In these poems, some of the book’s most personal and intimate moments are shared. From them, we also gather that the speaker is struggling with not identifying herself in relation to men, which includes her husband.
In the first To My Husband poem, the speaker offers to wear “rose-bud panties” she was abused in by her step-father and still has hidden in her lingerie bag as “proof.” In a later To My Husband poem, the speaker reveals how her relationship to all men, including her husband, has been scarred by her experiences with her step-father when she says,
“If I married a man like my Daddy and got
him to mark me, I could win.
In the dark, I thought you were him.”
Along with poems of trauma and survival come meditations on womanhood and its position in relation to sex and sexuality. In the prose poem “Domesticated,” the speaker ruminates on the family dog as well as its mundane, “bloodless” feedings day after day. Through this metaphor of a domesticated pet that has “never killed anything,” we can see the speakers own feelings of domestication and how over time a marriage’s initial love and intimacy may fade or change. Reminiscing on how things used to be, the speaker says,
“In a lifetime, the only bloody egg I’ve seen I threw away, made my husband start fresh while I left the room. He’ll wake after I leave, reheat the coffee and plop in front of the TV. Once upon a time he cooked eggs every day, over-easy in bacon grease. The dog’s chin matted with gold.”
Directly after “Domesticated,” in the poem “Mastectomy,” the speaker again grapples with their identity as a woman in relation to their sexuality and position to men when they think about their grandmother’s mastectomy and who suckled from her now removed breasts, as well as the speakers own breasts and how her husband sucks from them. In the final lines, the poem says,
“At night
I nurse my husband now,
Even as my grandmother closes
Her eyes, gives thanks to the knife.”
Despite the book’s heaviness, it does hold a sense of hope. Specifically, in the poem “January” and the final poem, we get a sense that the speaker’s outlook is changing and that they are gaining control of their own story and with it, power. In the poem “January,” the speaker is running home but stops to take a photo of green watercress peeking out beneath ice in a frozen canal – a sign of hope and rebirth amidst the cold choke of winter.
Harvest displays a willingness to give name to and speak openly about abuse and its ramifications. It takes a hard look at love and sex, and what it means to be a woman in today’s world. It draws inspiration from the imaginary world of a child as well as the natural and interior world of an adult, and in the end, stands as a testament of strength among the ruins of a lost childhood.
Harvest can be purchased on Finishing Line Press’ website.