Broken Pencil
Broken Pencil
Feb/March. 2002]
(Reviewed by Emily Pohl-Weary)
The Chick at the Back of the Church
Billie's the shit. She's a damn solid writer who will make your head spin and your knees buckle. Her poetry's grounded in the griminess of life, and she'll never apologize for her sexuality, hide from her freakiness or shy away from controversy. These proud poems tell the tale of survivors with the wits of frightened animals, who spit and scratch when life tries to take them captive. Billie Livingstone
Billie's poems are proof that equality and self-love are intrinsic human necessities, and that sometimes poverty, neglect, pain and suffering can harden into resolution and the determination to survive. Skeletons “pile up in the closet,” but they don't even have time to gather dust before new bones are thrown carelessly on top. And why the hell should we be concerned with regrets, anyhow, after scrambling back up onto our own two feet over and over again? These poems aren't pretty, and Billie doesn't pause to contemplate the over-arching meaning of life, or any kind of formal poetic structure, but she has a way of capturing the push and pull of family dynamics, and demonstrating the way some fleeting events can linger with us, like bleeding tattoos.
