Salt Is For Curing by Sonya Vatomsky
Sator Press, 2015
80 pages – Sator / Amazon
Sonya Vatomsky’s debut full-length collection of poems, Salt Is For Curing is at once a dark fairytale, a gory meal, a reckoning with trauma, and a spellbook for healing. It is in many ways a document of personal resurrection, but not in a familiar way. The poem “Kill Rockstars” asserts: “My first order of business is remaking the resurrection myth.”
Vatomsky does so by brewing up a multi-course meal of intense, funny poems that are not afraid to venture into the places that hurt most. In these poems, Vatomsky negotiates the differences between innocence and evil contained within us all, talks back to fairytale demons and horror story angels, by plunging straight into the marrow and serving it up for us. Take the poem “Coq au vin,” which opens:
I make a thick paste from the bones
of a phoenix, half a bruised yellow onion.
And later:
I’m opening my skin for you, folding it down and around
Rolling out my skin for you, wrapping it like crust to
warm your bones as you rise to breathe my breath
A phoenix’s bones; I’m spreading skin thin on a slab and
you yawn. Cooking – it takes too long. A woman –
she takes too long.
I peel my skin off like lettuce leaves, press them wet against
your mouth to stop the ocean; let me talk, let me whisper
This is so you never rise
This is so you never rise
This is so you never rise
In this poem, the speaker repeats these lines like a spell, a protective force against the curse of trauma inflicted by the phoenix. She is tied up with the phoenix; it is a part of her body and her cooking, but she uses this to her advantage. She keeps baking to stop the dough from rising, cuts open her skin to prevent repossession by the demon. By using her wounds as weapons, she seeks resurrection through means of her own pain. The speaker in “Lappish Hag’s Love Potion” also understands this secret well:
Soak
in
old
bathwater
and
sluice
away
skin
until
ribs
open
up
and
the
heart
is
expelled
like
an
oyster
pearl
Eventually, beauty and truth emerge from the grit “like an oyster pearl,” but it is a dark and painful process. In this way, Vatomsky explores the depths of mental illness in a manner that is unusual, yet relatable. These poems recall images as if from forgotten dreams. By presenting a nuanced reimagining of classic archetypes (the mother, the witch, the lover, the prince), we can understand them as expressions of our most essential human experiences. Vatomsky reminds us that fairytales can sometimes be the darkest stories of all, that the seemingly innocent can mask the grotesque. Take the poem “A mother’s advice (1),” which opens:
How many backs did the beast have, who did this?
Did he promise himself a prince (or, at the very least,
some kind of minor nobleman)? Did the bloodstains on
the floor not scare you, or had he pushed those bodies
under a bed in preparation, pulled loose rich silks to
obscure limbs and fingers? I never leave home without
a grimoire, but new monsters roam each fortnight; it’s
hard to prepare.
By referencing the familiar realm of the fairy tale “prince” only to unveil its hidden “bloodstains,” Vatomsky reveals difficult truths about our own equally real but less obvious world full of monsters and deceitful royalty. This poem describes how easily love can go wrong, how much is at stake for every woman. Even with the aid of a witch’s “grimoire,” there is no guarantee for survival. At the heart of these poems is the pain of failed romance, of loving someone who takes you for granted, an intense and relatable ache. Take the poem “Spidersilk,” which opens:
You looked so far away I felt crazed; gutted myself like
a fish and dug in, laid my entrails bare and ruby-red on
your grandfather’s table and watched your rifle through
them like cheap rings at a weekend market, like I’d make
your fingers swell and stain green and my rubies would
fall off in a day’s wear. This is how you look when I show
you all I have, spread myself before you like a picnic
These poems ask us: How do we learn to value ourselves when others only see us as a “cheap ring?” How can a person relate to their body after it has been violated? Salt Is For Curing seems to suggest that part of the answer is in the asking. By lingering in the pain for a while, it lessens. By sitting in the stinging salt, we just might find a “cure.” Through these poems, we become more aware of our hurt. Yet, despite all of the darkness and gore, the speaker still asserts in “Bathymetry:”
I’ve got the kind of light
they name galaxies after.
This sentiment serves as both an ending and as a beginning within the feast that is Salt Is For Curing. This slim, seemingly unassuming book of poems has the power to gut us with its honesty, disarm us with its vulnerability, and enchant us with its inventive language and imagery. Salt Is For Curing is a powerful spell to read over and over again.
Ariel Kusby is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. She graduated from UCLA in 2015, where she studied Creative Writing and Fine Art. Her poems, reviews, and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, Luna Luna Magazine, The Culture Trip, Chaparral, Pith, Umbrella Factory, Spires, -Ology, The Riveter Review, Glass Kite Anthology, and elsewhere. To learn more, visit https://arielkusby.com/.
