he says i’m fierce by Debbie Collins

Debbie Collins’ he says i’m fierce speaks to the complicated state of our human condition with unapologetic rawness and an almost-violence of emotion. We learn again that damaged can be beautiful, and imbalance can fuel love. Collins doesn’t hide behind the language, but tackles the hard stuff outright in her concrete, minimalist style. We know exactly what she means when “they found me with sand in my hair, //sand in my mouth //on a beach in Laguna.” We’re there with the god of pills crouched in the corner; we see the lips stained strawberry red. And yet, this slender collection holds light as well as darkness, and moments of surprising tenderness. “You sometimes say // that I’m strongest // in my broken places,” the narrator tells her lover. While we know it’s a cycle of brokenness that will require strength again and again, we also witness little intimacies of contentment that stud these poems like shy stars in a stormy night sky:

Say something, I said, and 

you said my name. Turns out 

it was all I ever wanted.

This, at the end of the day, after the mix of highs and lows, of shrieking joys and terrible wounds, the attempts and the affairs and hangovers, this: the curing and quieting of it all by the simple sound of our name. There will be time tomorrow to return to life’s rollercoaster, to drink that whole pot of coffee ourselves, fiercely.

–Joanna Lee, author of Dissections