Literary reviews by Tim Love.
Warning: Rather than reviews, these are often notes in preparation for reviews that were never finished, or pleas for help with understanding pieces. See Litref Reviews - a rationale for details.

Wednesday, 3 September 2025

"Teeth in the back of my neck" by Monika Radojevic (Merky Books, 2021)

If you don't like the first page, you might as well cut your losses - it doesnt get much better. Even the poems which make a valid (albeit obvious) point need drastic editing. I think "The right kind of blood" is best. "Jane" could have been the best. "When we arrive" and "56+" are maybe the worst, but it's a tough call. Here are some samples -

  • I want/ the whales to suck in bellyfuls of fetid air and sing their songs for nobody, and I want the noise to be loud and unbearable,/ trauma translated into a sound only the tiny bones in the human ear/     can pick up, and let it become a forever-tune, like the sudden ringing in the ear (p.4)
  • Everything changes when your body is a broken city (p.20)
  • Does this phoenix sit in the skull of just a few of us,/ or must every human shed their skin of dreams to get a foot on the ladder? (p.24. Yuck)
  • If only I could bottle your precocious self-adoration into a perfume to dab behind my ears (p.47)
  • What's a name, but a rubber stamp on the soul, after all? (p.50)
  • life does to women what distance does to lovers,/ quenches that thirst, douses that fire (p.55)
  • I collect stories like drains collect rainwater, and heavy is the overflow of collective disappointment/ that comes from living undesired (p.59)
  • shame is women's DNA to be pulled from their molars/ and I am strong, but/ my strength is only relative to the weights that are silent birthed with us (p.76. A mess)

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