From the first poem in Triage, Abigail Kirby Conklin primes the reader to experience both lack and satisfaction. In “Brutality” Conklin begins, “You ever want / someone so much, / your chest empties / out? That violent, / pressing nullity” and continues by listing the dramatic physical effects that wanting another human can enact on the body. The speaker ends this short opening poem with “Yeah. // Me neither.” Conklin builds reader expectations and releases them coolly, with a twist of irony. Throughout Triage, Conklin employs everyday situations described with witty, sarcastic language to scrutinize what it means to find and lose joy.

Triage teases the reader; the poems keep their cards close, giving little warning about what is about to happen, and I am pulled along by the current of the collection. The poems remain consistent in form—free verse that holds to the left margin—and within that space the poems thunder and roll. “You did not stay / when I told you to go” (from “[If You Stay With Me], You’ll Be Barefoot and Pregnant by This Time Next Year”) is a mind-wrinkling example of Conklin’s playful use of language; there is a push and pull between what is stated and what is wanted within a relationship. It takes time to think through these language puzzles. Conklin’s skill resides in relaying a genuine depth of story and feeling in very short phrases.

Although the poems practice honesty, their ultimate truth and peace is never quite revealed. The poems, even in their turbulence, are remote; the speaker hides in layered metaphor and truisms. In this selection from “Coping Mechanisms,” the speaker delays a moment of pure brilliance by digressing about real estate: “I am / slowly completing the paperwork / to secure real estate for my own / novitiate, have found god / in the undersides / of lightness.” This revelation of finding God is astounding and demands that I stop, breathe, consider. God would be found in the undersides of lightness, some tender, ethereal place. The collection has several of these illuminating vulnerable moments, when the clandestine speaker pushes through into the carefully crafted poem. 

I relish moments like this one from “The Usual Séance”: “I make daylight, pressed up / against its tyrant.” The diction here is reminiscent of Plath, as it is in the poem “Elsewhere,” which is arguably the strongest in the collection. Conklin is at her best in “Elsewhere,” writing, “Elsewhere, / I am having regular, consensual sex, / receiving prompt replies to text / messages, and talking about systemic / corruption over bad drinks / and suspicious popcorn.” The use of “suspicious” is wonderfully surprising and elevates the list from a simple recounting of dating life to give the scene an appropriately threatening edge. The diction is strong and direct, revealing a sardonic but vulnerable speaker from whom I desperately want to hear more. Triage is skillfully crafted and full of heart; the poems are as content to float the reader through the spring air as they are to pull her down a gravelly alleyway. Wherever we go, we are never alone.

June 2020