REVIEW: ALCOHOLIC BETTY- ELISABETH HORAN (FLY ON THE WALL PRESS)
By Hokis, Senior Editor
“When I attack my birth,
my Lord
re-engorges
recalcitrant.
I chant in tongues
gobble it up
gobble it up
Virile shangons & voheries
& nevertheless. An uptick bang
& underdeen bullshit
this is the Sermon
of the Lost
of the Unquantified
He gives us.”
–Baptism gone awry
Believe what you want, but I believe Elisabeth Horan. Her raw use of precision words and language-play leaves a pile of spittle on your pillow like that left by the deep-sleep nightmare that comes from living life in the bottle, the backseat, and the psych ward. Living a blacked-out existence with her finger down her throat, with his […] down her throat, and his […] down her throat.
Her unformulatic formula is harshly at ease; words change shape to produce sounds for the tight mind that wants to scream, the loose coordination of the intoxicated tongue, and the exhausted soul called to shrivel. With phrases like “angelic confusion”, she affirmed both my humanity and my poetic desires. The margins of my worn copy of Alcoholic Betty are filled with notes, phrases, memories, and question marks. Horan has a way of conjuring such glaring images that I remain convinced I stood with her in each of her poem-rooms, as if the whispers of our confessional stories could easily be interpreted as the same sinner. This is quite a feat, for I am not even Catholic.
The relatability to the common shame we inflict on ourselves, no matter the story that covers above, lightened me. One of the more revelatory experiences that lingered for days is that “working poetry” is magical. Not as “healing” is sold to us, more in the way the tribal Shaman is selected without application. Their medicine is simply so, just as Horan’s ability to invite our self-forgiving humility through her gifted potion-ed pen.
