[REVIEW] Waterbaby by Nikki Wallschlaeger

REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Nikki Wallschlaeger’s Waterbaby is a tender, angry song for a broken world. However, it’s not the kind of song meant to heal; it exposes the truth, screams against injustice, shows lives full of bad moments and “working shit jobs,” and, ultimately, offers guidance to navigate the whole mess:

“Perhaps it’s best not to trust

the politics of people who

haven’t washed their own

dishes in twenty years.”

Waterbaby, Wallschlaeger’s third collection, is about being a Black woman in contemporary America, but it’s about much more. The poems here deal with everyday life, motherhood, family, and suffering. The body is always present. So is the passage of time and the realities that make life hard. Wallschlaeger tackles everything from her point of view, but most of the resulting poetry feels universal. Her thoughts and feelings belong to her, but some of those feelings will make readers nod their head in quiet agreement:

“Why do I feel so old

when I look so young

Have a night of ok fun

& feel better & younger

refreshed, maybe lovelier

but in the morning

I feel just as old again.”

The conversations Wallschlaeger has in this collection are simultaneously with herself, with everyone else, and even with some dead poets like William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, and Willian Carlos Williams. In each poem—and they vary greatly in terms of voice, rhythm, and length—Wallschlaeger gets to the core of what she wants to say without mincing words. Her approach is to slice to the heart, and it’s something that will leave a mark on readers, as there are lines here that punch with the power of truths many would rather not discuss in public:

“Plantations are prisons & prisons produce plantations,

how our runaway slave feet gotta close-read the rides.”

Another great example is this crushing line from “American Children,” which is a gem:

“I’m not sure the children understand what heroism could be, except that it involves weapons and blood on the ground and sacrifice.”  

“I’m the Black girl dozing with bleary/commuters on the Route 12 bus,” says Wallschlaeger, and while that might be true, she is much more here; a keen observer, a voice of truth, an astute chronicler. Waterbaby is beautiful in its musicality and Wallschlaeger has a vibrant rhythm that carries through in every poem, but this is a book that cuts deep into that amalgamation of beauty and horror we call America. This book claims the poet would come back from the dead to celebrate the end of capitalism. This book discusses the expectations women have to deal with. This book talks openly about doing the work but being tired of it. This book mentions guns as the everyday reality they are and shows the wounds of the “last four years of spiraling national leadership.”

There is a difference between angry poetry, which can come from anything and everything, and the kind of righteous dissatisfaction and indignation that holds Waterbaby together. This song isn’t just a healing song; this is the song we should play as we march into battle against racism and as we imagine the party we’d have after the death of capitalism. Read this celebration of language and then join me in eagerly awaiting Wallschlaeger’s next collection.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.