Ennis Rook Bashe's Not Girl But Knife

Reviewed by Amy Mitchell

(Ennis Rook Bashe, 2019)

Ennis Rook Bashe’s 2019 chapbook Not Girl But Knife: poetic dreams beyond gender is a great example of why the literary world needs to figure out a new way of handling self-published books, or perhaps simply a way—we tend to dismiss them as vanity projects written by hacks who could not secure a “real” publication because of the books’ lack of merit. However, this attitude, which I have been guilty of adopting, ignores the ways in which self-publishing removes barriers from authors who face daunting ones in the “real” publishing market. Bashe is “a disabled queer badass” (from their website) who has “given up on being traditionally published as an ownvoices disabled author” (Tweet from June 3, 2019) because of the myriad of ways in which the publishing industry discourages intersectional voices. The consequence is that, if we ignore the entire self-publishing sector, we’ll miss out on strong, engaging works that simply could not be brought to anyone’s attention in any other form.

I first encountered Bashe’s work when I saw a different author recommending Bashe’s novella California Skies. I’d personally give that novella a heavily qualified recommendation, simply because the ebook version I read desperately needed proofreading (the file may have been updated on Kobo since I purchased it about a year ago). But the content was light in the best way, lovely and affirming, and so when I saw Not Girl But Knife announced, I immediately purchased a copy. Not Girl But Knife does not suffer from any of the proofreading errors in California Skies and is a significant artistic development beyond Bashe’s novella. I wholeheartedly recommend this difficult, dreamy, sometimes angry, sometimes joyful poetry collection.
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A unique feature of Not Girl But Knife is that the basic poetic unit is not a single word or short, carefully-sculpted phrase/line, but is instead larger and more expansive—whole sentences or even longer, in some cases. The result is an engagingly informal, conversational style that is nonetheless subtly crafted and very effective:

The magician saws a woman in half. The magician pulls a rabbit from her ribcage, soft and twitching and wild.
It is all done with mirrors. I look in the mirror.
 
Houdini’s metamorphosis began with his hands tied behind his back because
he was about to become his own wife.
I tell my secrets to the icicles that grow from my body.
I freeze myself within a block of ice for sixty-three hours and am born again blue.
​
(From “Hemicorporectomy”)

Bashe uses the visual landscapes of SFF worlds, cyborgs, myths, Shakespeare and magic to explore the complexities of gender and identity:

I dream of being in space and needing to get a parasite out of me. Its blood is caustic and dripping and it eats through decks. We seal off what cannot be repaired and centuries from now everything that cannot be avoided will be controlled. My skin opens and
the cyborg surgeon does not ask about my certainty, it does not ask what I deserve, it heals with each cut, it peels out the parasite. Makes my body my own.
The body is a planet unfit for habitation. Everything growing here was already dead.
The body is a cryosleep chamber and I am slamming on the glass.

(From “Self-Portrait with Facehugger”)

***

My name is secret and no one who calls me by my wrong name can hurt me. If they do not know me or see me I am a ghost who can be stabbed without bleeding or I am a fairy trickster servant who makes rifles burn into balloon animals when they are aimed at me
or I am wrapped in something that shimmers rainbow like a soap bubble and cascades like a waterfall in sunlight but a million times stronger

(From “Merlin Magic Spell”)

***

Every time I sneak a dream of life outside branches
I beat my head against the bark. I spiral into
whirlwinds of introspection …
I promise I eat more than salt, but it’s not my fault I was born from the sea.
​
(From “Lost Ariel”)

One of my favorite poems in the collection is “Junkertown,” which blends a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-style setting with the simultaneous realizations that no one is whole in this landscape and that this lack of wholeness is just fine:

… We alternate the dreaming rest of medicated oracles with escape over sand. The last ocean travels intravenous in our blood.
This is the first rule of unending apocalypse: you don’t survive whole.
The second rule is: that’s okay.
​
(From “Junkertown”)

Not Girl But Knife affirms this message throughout—that wherever you’re at, in terms of physical ability, self-identity, gender, etc.—it’s okay.
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This being okay is not without its pain, though, and Not Girl But Knife does not shy away from the pain that a non-dominant identity can bring, especially if it’s a non-dominant gender identity, which can cost you (among other things) your family. As the poem with the heartbreaking title “My Crush Is Friends With Her Parents” observes,

I wish you weren’t incandescently sweeter than me, such a dutiful heart
while I seethe with blunt rage and forget how to talk.
​
(From “My Crush Is Friends With Her Parents”)

There is also the searing pain of “How Birds Detransition,” which figures detransitioning as birds that have deliberately decided to remove their own wings and pluck out their own feathers in response to social pressure:

…
They say it’s not flying, it’s just walking incorrectly as deemed by society.
…
These young men who had wings bursting from their backs
and cut them off.
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(From “How Birds Detransition”)

Bashe’s voice is consistently inventive, insightful, wryly funny (one wonderful poem is titled “We Are Waiting For the Limousine to the Homosexual Orgy”), and perceptive about intersectional experiences. We need more of all of this in the literary world, especially the intersectionality (as one example, the “Orgy” poem opens with the lines, “One disabled person is a tragedy. / Two are contagious”). This chapbook is also just a really great read. I highly recommend it, and I’m looking forward to seeing where Bashe’s work goes next (they are pretty firmly committed to producing high-quality YA fiction, alongside the other writing they do, so keep an eye on this if you’ve got teenagers in your life). Oh, and one benefit of self-publishing: Not Girl But Knife will only set you back a few bucks. It’s more than worth it.

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Amy Mitchell is The /tƐmz/ Review's social media editor (as well as a writing editor) and a college professor. She holds a PhD in English Literature from Western University. Her reading tendencies have been described as "promiscuous"; she is interested in a wide range of fiction and poetry, and particularly enjoys finding new and interesting works in translation.