Thirty Dollars and a Bowl of Soup by Carla M. Cherry [Book Review]

Every woman needs a sisterhood / that will stick to the ribs. (from “Sisterhood (for Tanya)”)

Once again, the back cover description that her poems “run the gamut from Flint to fibroids” summarize it wonderfully. Reading Carla M. Cherry’s writing makes you feel like she’s speaking directly to you in person at her kitchen table. Every poem is like a chapter of her memoir. She tells you exactly what she’s wondering, sensing, learning, tasting, harboring, mourning, and carrying every day — as a woman, person of color, a mother, a teacher, a lover, a seeker, an advocate, and a writer.

I knew he was the one when I watched him / eat a mango” (from “If He Knows a Mango”)

Her roles and perspectives come together like ingredients in recipes for different dishes; I imagine her cooking poems in her mind’s kitchen, stirring words together with a pen-shaped spoon.

Cherry’s style is consistently surprising. Just when I thought she did not use rhyme whatsoever, I read, “Give Me Some Sugar.” Cherry’s calling card is the forward slash, a punctuation popularized in our post-modern computing. It gives stream of consciousness order as it speeds up the line, running images back to back to back, often gaining intensity as it lists all the options, a repetition that never tires. If Cherry addresses police brutality, she does not list one name of the black men and women, boys and girls killed; she lists all the names. When she addresses the types of rare and unsustainable materials we use every day, she lists all of them in “Machines.” Why? Because these are not issues that come up sometimes, they are an every day reality.

She speaks to the fact that past has a presence in the present, that the privilege afforded some because of birth, skin color/tone, hair texture, word choice, clothing, and body types are with us in every action and inaction, and the ignorance and ignoring of injustice “in post-racial America” (from “I Shouldn’t Have Been There”).

“Love Letter” struck me the most as a single piece because it captured Cherry’s voice while artfully playing with her style in repetition, punctuation, and form. She hit all her high notes in “Love Letter” and I read it over multiple times, written almost like singing a round. Here is an excerpt from the middle of the poem:

Strap on heels/slip on sneakers, and step. / She will complement mahogany skin with lips in perfect purple pulchritude. / The fuller the lips, the bigger the orgasm. / Strap on heels/slip on sneakers, and step. / They already know– / The fuller the lips, the bigger the orgasm. / And black matches everything. / They already know– / The human race runs the gamut of shades, / And black matches everything. / Slick on cayenne pepper red lipstick if you want to: the brighter, the better.”

After 86 poems and 158 pages in 6 parts all named for pieces of the earth, Cherry leaves us hungry for more. An English teacher and poet from New York City, she is currently working on two more poetry books. Her other published works include: Gnat Feathers and Butterfly Wings (2008) and Honeysuckle Me (2017).

Check out her books and author page on Amazon and connect with her on Instagram and Twitter.

We also recently reviewed Cherry’s Honeysuckle Me (2017).