Creature Without Building, Ray Vincent-Mills
V. Press, 2022 £6.50
Strikethrough
I’ve read individual poems that make use of the strikethrough before, but never a collection that uses it so consistently to explore hesitation, power and permission around language.
In my reading, several of the poems here are written in a transmasculine voice, with the strikethrough used on words that relate to the assumption of others that the speaker is/was female, as in ‘Woman in waiting (or so they thought)’:
6ft they said,
cake-batter thighs,
a woman in waiting.
In ‘Like mother unlike daughter’, this is juxtaposed with exploration of what language is permitted around race:
It’s odd to be raised by a white woman
When you are not one
When everyone looking at you is expecting
[…]
An opinion
On the N word
And whether I can say it
Whether they can
With eager eyes and misleading lips
Nigga please
‘Nick names / / Dessert options’ starts with a list of dark-coloured desserts, with the implication that these might be used as nicknames for darker-skinned people. The dual meaning is underlined through the strikethrough in the poem’s final section:
But maybe I want to be
Pavlova.
Dolloped with whatever’s in season.
One of my favourite poems here is the tender, morning-after poem ‘Black, one sugar, please’, in which the speaker reflects on what they do and don’t say to a new lover who offers a crass line when talking about coffee:
Strong, dark and sweet.
Just like you.
Normally the punchline is just muscle memory.
I roll my eyes,
or say good one,
and think bad thing.
But
your voice is gentle.
There is no crowd
and I brush it off.
I’ve heard that one before.
You look down, say, I’m sure you have.
And I’m not sure why I lied,
as no one has ever said strong before.
I like the ambiguity of the strikethrough in the title — for me, it perfectly enacts these unsure lovers, hesitating as they try to say the right things.