jo reyes-boitel’s the matchstick litanies, Next Page Press,
2023, $18, 73pgs, reviewed by cloud delfina cardona
 

What does the body still hold on to after violence? After loss? After resentment? After grieving the living? What happens to the mind when your childhood is spent in proximity to violence? These are questions that jo reyes-boitel explores in the matchstick litanies.

The book begins with the dedication to “the twelve-year-old girl I was.” This tenderness for the speaker’s younger self is felt throughout her book. Not only does the speaker return tenderness to herself, but gives herself the truth about her upbringing.

The secondary character is the next door house-fire, which appears throughout several poems. The opening poem in the book is part of a series, titled “the house next door is on fire,” illustrating a fractured portrait of the night her family woke up to a fire spreading from their neighbor’s home. Each poem in the series reveals another part of the burning mosaic—whether it’s a new detail about the fire or a feeling left unsaid in the previous poem.

As a fire rips through whatever lies in its path, the speaker’s family reckons over their decisions and what is and is not in their control. In “starless,” the speaker’s mother says, “If only I had known more English then. / I wouldn’t have ended up with that man.” reyes-boitel invites us into her mother’s wounds. In “bitter oranges,” she makes this observation about her mother,

This is what has made her mad, she realizes. That she took the role
She never really wanted, that it weighed so much more
than the lilt of freedom.

Additionally, the speaker’s brother and father are complicated figures. reyes-boitel’s poems make space for both love and anger. In “flint,” the speaker details her brother’s face and his post-jail rituals of calling friends and taking sandwiches from her. She says, “The shape of our childhood has worn on him. / He bears the brunt of anger and can’t reconcile it within, / even as our stories are unraveling.”
reyes-boitel is a professional poem closer. This is apparent throughout the book, especially in “slicing fruit” and “collateral damage”—two poems that speak to the complications of loving a mother as a daughter. In “slicing fruit,” she recounts a phone call with her mother about her loveless marriage. reyes-boitel ends the poem with her observation, “My inheritance: the heaviness of lungs holding their inhalations.” It is incredible how much a daughter can hold for a mother. The following poem, “collateral damage,” details a mother’s resentment toward her daughter and granddaughter:

If my voice wasn’t valuable then why offer it now?
If she will not hear the answer she already knows—that anger,
like anything else, is inherited—why bother asking me? Me,
who had to learn how to mother myself, and sometimes her,
and that child too?

jo reyes-boitel’s poetic structures are recognizable through their sprawling nature. Many of her poems use white space and indentations. This form mimics the fleeting nature of memory; fragments of thoughts and feelings are scattered like confetti on the page. The collection also includes prosaic poems with lines that almost span margin to margin like in “anthropology” and “La Vernia, TX.” reyes-boitel gives room for her stories to breathe.

the matchstick litanies is for daughters with difficult mothers. It is for Latinas who have put up walls. It is for anyone who struggles with loving a fractured family.

Originally published in the February edition of the Caldwell Hays Examiner, A news outlet & curator attuned to issues of justice & equity in Caldwell & Hays counties.