Body Count

If torment can be translated into poetry, Kyla Jamieson’s Body Count is it. Suffering, perhaps lastingly from post-concussion stress, Jamieson reaches through a series of “effing and blinding,” or incautious words, angrily but proudly, a sequence of unromantic sexual encounters taking her from the Physics of Atmospheric Misogyny to a newer stage, Victims of Captology (most likely derived from the Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary entry: “‘captor,’ a person who has captured a person or thing”), though the identity of the captor is seemingly the accidental circumstance itself sharing the blame for her anguish and entrapment.

The pages express self-indulgence. That is not intended as an accusation, just the very nature of the form. Probably chronologically sequential, the poems lighten a little, and as a contribution to those painfully hiding their own experience, she can admit,

“With my
Concussion comes tunnel vision
This is not a metaphor.
The periphery disappears.”

The photo image beside the acknowledgements to those who guided her towards recovery shows an undeniably beautiful young woman, (an irresistible though politically incorrect comment) who belongs to a fistful of minority groups. Some she can resist, others accept.