Blood Wallah: And Other Poems
Robert Borski
Dark Regions Press
ISBN: 978-1-937128-12-8

Reviewer: JoSelle Vanderhooft


          A “wallah,” for those who do not know, is an individual associated with a specific service or work. For example, a barista is a coffee wallah, a chef is a kitchen wallah, and a vampire is a blood wallah, particularly if said vampire’s sanguinary knowledge resembles that of a sommelier’s (a wine wallah) for an encyclopedia of vintages.

          Such is the speaker in the poem that opens—and titles—Robert Borski’s latest, unforgettable collection of speculative poetry, or poetry that explores themes, tropes, characters, and other essentials of genres such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, and every permutation these three bastions have sired. Our titular wallah is a vampire with the charm and sophistication of Anne Rice’s Lestat, the predation of Count Dracula, and the piano wire-sharp senses of taste and smell of Hannibal Lecter (who was something of a vampire in his own right, really), and his (or perhaps her) cellar is groaning with an array of vintages—and bodies—of which our vault-keeper has nothing but praise.

While non-hemophiles may disagree,
it is easily the most complex beverage
there is in terms of taste and reward,
and for those with discriminating palates
and uncrazed by thirst

…

a wide variety of tonal flavors
can be enjoyed not only for their
vitality and restorative nature,
but savored for complexities of
aroma, character, and finish.

Take this beverage here.

Obviously youthful and fair, within days,
if left to ripen, it will begin to acquire
the first of what I call a lunar sparkle,
for just as the sea is duplicated
within the host species, so are certain
rhythms of the sun and moon.

Hence a beverage supped at dusk, on
the cusp of its egg-tipping luteal advent

(I speak here, of course, of vin femme,
the more variable of the two adult cultivars)…

          This is far from being the cleverest, most striking, or most beautiful poem in Blood Wallah. However, it provides an excellent template to explain the rest of the collection without systematically breaking down every poem (which I am sorely tempted to do, despite restraints on time and space).

          Speculative poetry is at its best when it endeavors to break apart the bones of familiar figures such as vampires, werewolves, witches, spaceships, and dragons and rearrange them as chimera that speak to us in even more breathless, urgent, and ephemeral tones than their ancestors. Boreski’s poetry does exactly this, using clever wordplay, eye-popping images (“the cusp of its egg-tipping luteal advent” is one I would just love to steal and bronze), and a lexicon that would have done Dr. Samuel Johnson proud. In “Blood Wallah,” the vampire is no longer the night-stalking figure of Slavic legend and Bram Stoker’s fevered imagination, nor is s/he the sexy sophisticated lover from many a paranormal romance. While s/he has elements of both, s/he is something new entirely: a collector, whose hoard includes (and do pardon the spoiler) an imprisoned (and presumably conscious) young Amish woman. And there is something vampiric about collectors, no matter the object(s) of their desire. How many of us who collect anything have not become obsessive about our treasured possessions, or haughty about our knowledge of, say, Depression-era glass or Doctor Who memorabilia? How many of us have said, not entirely certain if we were joking or not, “I would just kill to possess that?” Borski’s observation about vampires simultaneously makes a comment about our own very human—and thus very disturbing—foibles while  proving that vampires can still be (if you’ll pardon the pun) fresh and relevant after centuries of stories, films, and novels.

          But I did say that “Blood Wallah” is not the best poem in the book. Indeed, the poems that follow this are even sharper in language and execution, and their revelations about our shadow selves even scarier. “All the Clocks of Hell” provides us a feast of nightmarish clocks that do not “tick and bray” in this timeless place of punishment, much to the very mortal terror of those who gaze upon them. “Gepetto” gives us a deeply feminist retelling of Pinocchio in which the woodcarver relies on the social mores that keep girls “more mindful of their parents” to keep his second marionette from rebelling. “NOIR” re-spins the classic crime genre as a Kafkaesque parable. Perhaps the most terrifying poem in the book, “Requiem for the Tooth Fairy” (here reproduced in full), turns a childhood fantasy inside out.

While I have yet to pick my weapon of
ultimate dispatch—

the looped string attached to the doorknob;
the pliers;
the canister of knockout gas
or anaesthetic syringe—

by the time my benefactor shows up
to claim her assortment of ivory

(you cannot see them now, but
gleaming with blood and spittle,
the last three of my incisors
lie beneath my pillow like miniature
tusks—the human equivalent
of an elephant’s graveyard)

the only other thing I will have left
to decide is how I’m going to spend
the purse I intend to take from her.

See? In order to press my case,
I’ve already prepared
the restraints of floss, the fragrance
of which now permeates the air
like an abattoir of mint—

even as, like a snake a-sniff,
my tongue probes the semi-empty
sepulcher of my jaw.

Seconds later, feigning sleep, I
hear a noise.

Cautiously, readying the garrote
of floss, I risk a peek; and just
as expected,

with coins held tight like unrung
bells, in, on gossamer feet,

tiptoes my mother.  

           Some of Borski’s pieces are quite playful. “Neighbors” and “The Integer Formerly Known as 667” are witty complaints from the Number of the Beast’s closest neighbors packed with mathematical and occult humor, and “CSI: Transylvania” is, well, a very funny parody of the popular crime drama involving the undead. However, “Requiem for the Tooth Fairy” uses this playfulness to draw the reader into a terrifying trap. At first, the fantasy sounds like one some of us may have harbored as children: if the tooth fairy carries so many quarters around with her, think of how robbing her would fill my piggy bank! But something is immediately off: even the most precocious of children typically does not make such methodical plans, or think in such violently poetic terms. Further, incisors are typically the first baby teeth to go, not the last to be yanked out (and hardly ever accompanied with gore when they do go). And while a few coins may not be that much money anymore, grown men and women have committed murder for pocket change.

          The final line is the most shocking of all, because it unseats—again—any assumptions we have been making and leaves us wondering exactly what we have read. Who is the speaker? Is s/he a methodically sane person who wants to kill his/her mother out of boredom (the majority of his/her excitement, after all, is directed not at spending the purse, but at the methods of dispatch)? Is s/he a disturbed adolescent? An adult living with his/her mother who wants to kill her for reasons unrelated to this twisted vision of the tooth fairy? The uncertainty of this poem, and of many of Borski’s finest pieces, makes this collection not only difficult to put down, but truly haunting.

          And sometimes, Borski’s poetry is just heart-stopping in its beauty and intelligence. Sadly, “Wormwood” (the best poem in the book) runs three pages and can’t be effectively reprinted here, or even fully analyzed given the complexity of its structure. Suffice it to say, then, that its meditations upon hallucinogenic substances, divine visions, and the apocalypse (both biblical and atomic) are some of the most profound poetry I have ever had the pleasure of reading and well worth the entire cover price. Speaking of biblical, “Gaia’s Children” explores a passage from Saint Augustine that I have always found troubling: the idea that disabled bodies will be restored to “the normal shape of a man” at the resurrection. Here, Borski makes this restoration not about the incompleteness of disability (an ableist concept if ever one existed), but about the privilege of those society designates as “normal.” As the last trumpet sounds, the dead who arise are the inhabitants of a Wunderkammer—those of “unorthodox limbs” who are either shunned as monsters at birth or altered to look more monstrous. Here, then, Heaven becomes not a paradise where all worry ceases, but a world where social injustice burns away along with those who perpetuate it.

Outside, the world burns in a new light,
but we ex-terata are oddly inured
to the flames, like saints in some
cathedral of snow.

As we proceed en masse from
the Hall of Curiosities—we once
and former cyclops, fused
twins, and clever fakes
(not a single one of our mermaids
was born fish-tailed or scaled)—
we’re afraid to look down
at our shadows,
but for the first times in our bleak lives
know hope.

As for the few who insist Heaven
is merely another sort
of gulag, with normalcy
for shackles,
these we dismember
and eat on the long trip up.

          Robert Borski is, quite simply, one of the best speculative poets writing today, and fans of this genre (as well as non-fans who love strange, thoughtful, and haunting work) should definitely pick up this volume. His words are further complemented by the always appropriate and flawless work of artist Marge Simon, who has illustrated several speculative poetry collections over the past few decades.