Onion Man, Kathryn Mockler’s forthcoming poetry collection from Tightrope Books, is a series of untitled, linked poems that take on the force and breadth of a novel. The eighth untitled poem depicts a typical evening of a teenage girl working at a corn-canning factory with her boyfriend, Clinton. Throughout the poem, Mockler explores a conflict between the unnatural setting of the factory and the narrator’s yearning for connection and comfort.

Mockler first hints at the desolate environment of the factory. The narrator notes, “Lights and no/ windows trick me/ into thinking/ it’s day” (1-4) The narrator is “tricked” or deceived by an environment that does not provide windows and is brightly lit. Removed from the regular, predictable cycle of the day, she is “tricked’ by the other, false day of the factory. As the poem progresses, the narrator’s longing for a more natural environment emerges. When she leaves the factory for her cigarette break, she remarks that “the air/ is cool compared/ to the air inside” (8-10) and that “the sky is clear/ because we’re/ outside city limits” (11-13) She takes special note of the difference between the air in the factory and the air outside, and also of her location outside the city. The differences are meaningful to her. She also attends to sounds: “I hear the crickets the / way I imagine my/ mother did growing/ up on my grand-/parents dairy farm” (16-20). She imagines the way the crickets sounded to her mother in a rural, sensuous setting, revealing her desire to connect with such a setting and perhaps even her mother. Finally, she observes that “corncobs are piled/ in pyramids” (21-22); she remarks on the corn in its natural state, before it is canned and denatured.

Spending time with Clinton after work, she seeks both intimacy and comfort. She tells the reader what will take place at the end of the night: “Clinton/ and I will stash an/ A&P bag full of/ fresh corn to eat/ when we get home” (26-30). At home, they eat the corn as well as “garlic/ bread with cheese” ((31-32). The narrator and Clinton share in the intimate, comforting act of eating a meal together, a meal fit for hungry adolescents. That is, the meal contains little real nutrition, yet is full of rich, delicious taste and texture: the meal is sensual. After eating, the narrator reports that she and Clinton will “fall asleep/ in front of the TV” (33-34). They find physical closeness replete with intimacy: only trusting, close creatures can sleep in each other’s presence. The narrator, in the final image, compares the air from the “window fan” ((35) to “wind” (38) and her and Clinton’s hair “blowing…on/ and off [their] faces” (36-37) to “weeds” (38). When she compares the mechanically manufactured air flow to wind, something of the earth, we receive a hint at her need for comfort, since wind blowing upon one’s skin feels tender, even consoling. Her comparison of their hair to “weeds” (38) startles, since weeds are thought of as ugly and unwanted. The comparison could indicate her desire to imagine that she and Clinton are of the earth. It could, at the same time, reveal her perception that she and Clinton are in the category of “weeds” (38)—unwanted, unnecessary. Perhaps the larger world, full of false days and denatured food, has not given her a reason to believe otherwise. It is interesting to note, too, that while she finds intimacy with Clinton, this experience is accompanied by a screen, remote events happening in remote places, wind that isn’t real, and food that will leave her hungry for more.

Kathryn Mockler has an incredible gift for voice. The adolescent narrator of the eighth poem reports what is around her in a calm, childlike tone, but also one that is perturbed at the bleak, soulless aspect of her various settings. When the narrator remarks, “Lights and no/ windows trick me/into thinking/it’s day” her sentence structure suggests that she is not yet an adult, but the word “trick” suggests her mature awareness that something has deceived her out of something rightfully hers: daylight. Another of her gifts is for detail and imagery. Images such as “lights and no/ windows” (1-2) and corn “ready/ to be husked, de-/cobbed and sealed/ in cans” (22-25) and “garlic bread with cheese” (32) are full of implication. The factory is not only a factory, but a world completely removed from the regular cycles and rhythms of time; the corn is not permitted to remain as it is: rather it must participate in a larger process in which it is robbed of its most natural characteristics; finally, the delicious, late night meal doesn’t really feed the narrator or Clinton.

The images also create a world that can be richly apprehended, lived and breathed by the reader. In few words, Mockler creates a world as layered and characters as multifaceted as those found in a novel.

The poem reaches deeply. What could be more universal than a young person estranged from the pulse of life, wanting to locate and feel that pulse? Ultimately, the poem left me remembering my own long, treacherous and lonely youth.

The poem discussed is untitled and appears in Onion Man published by Tightrope Books, 2011.

Kathryn Mockler is the author of the poetry book Onion Man (Tightrope, 2011). Her writing has been published most recently in Joyland, The Antigonish Review, Rattle Poetry, and CellStories, and she has poems in upcoming issues of The Capilano Review, Descant, and The Windsor Review. Her short films have been broadcast on TMN, Movieola, and Bravo and have screened at festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, Palm Springs International Festival, and EMAF. Currently, she teaches creative writing at the University of Western Ontario and is the co-editor of the UWO online journal The Rusty Toque.