Proxy by R. Erica Doyle – Belladonna* Books

One sits complacently, staring into the television screen, changing channels, becoming engrossed and moving on, repeating, click click click, pause. Take a moment to visualize this. Now, imagine a book, a book that within the pages, starts fires and leaves one hungry. Each page, read in any order produces a thirst. One settles, one rereads, one moves on, and shuffles pages in all directions, eager to consume again – or in some cases consuming uncontrollably and eager to stop. Each word read, draws the reader to the opposite ends of the spectrum of feeling. Jolts so alive they electrocute one to the deepest pits inside oneself.

R. Erica Doyle’s Proxy released in April 2013 by Belladonna* Books finds those pits, stares them down and screams at them to feel something. It is like a magic book, a book of raw sexual contempt, pleasure, misery and satisfaction that bridges that gap between linguistics and physics. It feels like a breathing beast, that screams to the nature of the queer woman’s heart. (As Doyle used only “you” I implore you to take ownership as the pages are consumed.) Poetry has reached new ends with this text, it is a genuine documentation of life in written form.

R. Erica Doyle was born in Brooklyn to Trinidadian immigrants. The list of published works is extensive, including but not limited to, Best American Poetry, Voices Rising, Ms Magazine and numerous other publications. Having started writing at a very young age, Doyle describes her multi-layered dialogues overlapping and likens writing to breathing for herself. The basis for Proxy started as she pondered human existence, and physics, “between point A and point B there are an infinite number of steps — half the distance, a quarter, an eighth, and so on.” [i] It is in this text that she examines those steps, records them.

Proxy is cleverly broken down into 5 segments, Prologue, Palimpsest, Proxy, Phasedown, Petroglyph – each meant to convey the full circle cyclical nature of life. In turn this gives the ability to digest individual fragments of the books, much the way one can rearrange one’s past into any order for examination and reflection. Doyle achieved this after the first text, Palimpsest, when she searched the dictionary for “P” appropriate words. At the beginning of each section, there is a quote from David Berlinski, A Tour of the Calculus, “…Under the mathematician’s hands, the world contracts, but it becomes more lucid.” This is where the ride begins, into the fury and passion comprising a queer woman’s spirit.

Palimpsest is a raw force. The moment where you bite your tongue because to form one’s own identity without these tidbits would be a façade. Throughout the entirety of this text, Doyle refers to “you” thus bestowing each bit onto the reader as a personal capsule of time – if these are not one’s memories, there is certainly room to leave one gaping for the experience. The darker undertones of this work make it desirable for me – because it feels like a breathing documentation to a genuine experience. There is not enough reality based, writing – in any genre out there that captures queer women’s sex lies. I have never had these realities so sparsely articulated. I am thankful that this language has been documented by Doyle’s hand. It is an invaluable piece of reading that my 15 year old first year gayby self is literally wet over now that it exists. I can interject the realities here with my past, again, arranged in any particular order.

“You fuck artfully, are disappointed by graceless fumblings./You are unapologetic./If the moon is full your womb is an aching crater./You have become too earnest, trying so hard to mean something important./She is a letter in the envelope of your body./Everything she’s given you has expired.” Every line is filled with infinite wisdom and packed with so much heart. If everyone could have their own narrative written this type of language is highly desirable – for what better way can we deconstruct the barriers within society than unshakably walk in one another’s shoes, with “you”. You.