Misti Rainwater-Lites' The Kitchen is Closed by David McLean (Chapbook Review)

Misti Rainwater-Lites' The Kitchen is Closed
Review by David McLean

This is one of many books and chapbooks available from the almost irritatingly prolific Misti Rainwater-Lites, and IMHO it is one of the best, by her or anyone. This because she is in the process of perfecting her use of language so that her drunken boasts about being better than Anne Sexton are starting to come true. The control of words is quite astonishing in this collection. And the subject matter is the exigencies of day to day living in a crack whore shack in the face of a hurricane, but it could be heaven and hell and the apocalypse.

“Death is my newest distant lover.
I crook my finger. i bite my bottom lip. I wink.
He's leaving me to my bony thorny burn writhe fume
seethe life.
He knows I suck at blowjobs”

The whole voice and persona Misti has developed is very courageous, she takes the small tribulations she experienced, then, in her upbringing in the name of that cannibal suicide visionary Jesus the jerk-off God who defiles so many kids' tiny lives, and, now, in a country where they obviously believe that Jesus is basically OK but abortion and Arabs aren't. In the poem quoted above Misti discusses problems with food account balances and selling baby clothes on southeasttexas.com. Like she says, these poems are about being mad as Howard Hughes without his billions of exculpating pence, about trudging through the sludge of self-loathing.

You need to buy this book if you are, like me, happy to be a-normal, or if you are some normal bastard who wants to congratulate herself on her boring normalcy, or even if you just like poetry. Because Misti is obviously one of the best. Because we are all spiritually bereft; there is no spirit, and Misti's poetry teaches us how to live without it.


Available from Deadbeat Press.

Author bio:

David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there in a cottage on a hill with a woman, five selfish cats, and a stupid puppy. Details of his three available full length books, various chapbooks, and over 700 poems in or forthcoming at more than 300 places online or in print over the last couple of years, are at his blog at htpp://mourningabortion.blogspot.com. He has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, whatever that is. He would very much like you to buy his books so he can drink more. A new chapbook "of dead snakes" is due at Rain over Bouville in Feb 2009, and one from Poptritus Press in the summer.