Thick Lazy Tongue
A Novel
Misti Rainwater-Lites
Ebullience Press: Albuquerque, New Mexico, 112 pages

Reviewed by R.K. Wallace

Misti Rainwater-Lites loves her porn and she loves her poetry, hence why she is the editor of the print poetry zine, Instant Pussy, a outlet for the less conventional and often thwarted creative voices of today’s underground literature world, and also a showcase for some rather tasteful nude pictures of females (and males) that compliment the main course of a fine collection of contemporary verse. But that is not all. Misti Rainwater-Lites has self-published a number of books of her own poetry and prose as well, including Arsenal of Spitwads and Mordiscado. Furthermore, she has been hailed as “the Confessional Poet Laureate of the United States,” and has appeared in so many underground poetry zines that it would easier to name the very few that are missing out on such a new and genuinely raw talent.

And “raw” being the appropriate word because the book being reviewed here is not your average conventional narrative that has been left to stew on the back burner for five years while the author thinks of what to use as a starter line. No, this is something, which has more or less just been cut off the live animals back. This is a small, yet chunky piece of meat, which the author takes unprepared and throws into your face, daring you to eat it like a savage – uncooked.

Thick Lazy Tongue, however, is by no means the first choice of publication from the author’s extensive list, but it is one of her more unique pieces given the urgency of its conception. It is a short novel she claims to have written in the space of twenty-four hours. It is a story (or rather a bunch of stories) that explores the heart of the already shattered American dream, along with the equally shattered life of a female writer living not far from a cockroach existence in the so called land of opportunity. It is a brutal tale crafted very much with a poetic brilliance which Sylvia Plath and Dorothy Parker would have been proud of.

I am living true. I am living large. I am fat with life. Do you hear me America? Do you see me world? I am spinning, unafraid…You are alone. You alone will witness the agony, the humiliation, the heartbreak, the ecstasy, the triumph, the degradation, the absurdity that is your life.

She takes us through a roller coaster of various narratives ranging from present day observations of America to distant memoirs of her childhood and sometimes to the more surreal moments, which combine both the past and the present dilemmas. The present-day narratives are more of a political critique on the current state of the American Dream, which is where the story kicks off:

Harsh fluorescent lights. Tiny insects flying around the bright orange tangelos. Stockers farting and whistling mindless tunes as they place cans of tuna fish on the shelves…Get. Me. Out. Of. Here. This is 2006 America. There is no escape. When you are living at the poverty level … buying your groceries at Wal-Mart Super center.

From here the novel becomes an almost classic Misti Rainwater-Lites “confessional,” where she digs into her past and asks us to look at the decaying bones of what was, if we have the guts. Of course it has not so much to do with guts than it does with a morbid curiosity, almost voyeuristic fetish, as we are seduced to take at least a peek, if not a prolonged ogle. However, further into the book she goes on to give us hints at her possible insecurities of being a confessional writer as she reluctantly invites us to participate in taking a look at her past childhood through a cinema screen, saying:

It was hard enough living your own life, you certainly don’t want to watch it, especially on a screen this size. You look around the theatre to make sure you are alone.

Certain aspects, it seems, when painted on such a large public canvas, do seem daunting to a writer. There is the feeling the author is not sure what to add to the book, or should I say, she is not sure how much she should add to the book, and obviously since it is “rushed,” no concise decision can be made – it’s all a gamble. But this is not necisarrily bad; it is actually interesting. It reminds me of a quote from Charles Bukowski who once said “it’s like a cigarette, the drag is for me and the ash for the audience.” It seems Bukowski learned how to balance his own personal living and what went inside his books, in other words, he learned what to save for himself and what information his audience was worthy of.

Of course, who, when writing a novella in such a short time span has time to think of what exactly gets put in and what doesn’t? Maybe the genuine and uncorrupted harshness of the voice says something more than a clean-cut, sanitized, manuscript, maybe it says something more about the talent of Misti Rainwater-Lites than it does about any of her flaws.

R.K. Wallace is a poet, who is originally from Scotland. He currently makes his home in Southern California.