A Review of Inconsolable Objects by Nancy Miller Gomez
Inconsolable Objects
by Nancy Miller Gomez
YesYes Books, 2024.
In the debut collection by Nancy Miller Gomez, Inconsolable Objects, we are introduced to our speaker as a “...grenade of a girl...arms cinched in tourniquets of tulle...throat choked in a rage of lace.” It is with this chilling metaphorical sleight of hand that we are quickly submerged into a world of keen observation where Gomez explores themes such as coming-of-age, motherhood, grief, and more.
Inhabiting her work in bone-sharp relief, Gomez gives us the sense we are standing on a precipice. For example, in “Tilt a Whirl,” adolescent sisters at a carnival attract unwanted attention from a ride operator, “…and my sister asked in her sweetest, most innocent—or maybe not-so-innocent—voice, Can we have a long ride please, mister?” Blurring the line between self-responsibility and consequence, the author builds a complex social commentary.
Further on, we learn of the speaker’s resilience and faith in “Resurrection” which tells the story of a girl who believes she can resurrect a dead catfish by performing mouth-to-mouth. Yet there is no resurrecting the husband lost to sudden death in “How to Forget,” “Once I was a wife. Now I am a wilderness.”
Grief escalates in this narrative, but we never feel the speaker has fallen victim to it. Instead, she becomes a woman whose heart is hinged open to empathy. “How Are We Doing” depicts a scene at the DMV:
So when you hand me back
my temporary license, along with a form
that asks, How are we doing?
I want to believe there is someone
watching over us to whom I can respond
Please, we’re not doing well here.
Interspersed throughout this very personal volume are poems inspired by current events in which Gomez allows herself to dwell. “The Road,” for instance, takes us to a war-torn Ukraine where a human heart lies in the road. Another poem unfolds fablelike as a monk meditating in the forest is eaten by a leopard, and yet another, when a species of snail is rendered extinct. These imaginings are forensic in their clarity, enough to convince us that Gomez is literally on the scene, a silent witness to gruesome realities. She does not look away and we don’t either.
Within the pages of Inconsolable Objects, Gomez strikes at the core of human existence and we are apt to recognize ourselves in lines such as these from the poem, “Childhood Insomnia”:
...At night, stupid with fear,
I’d lie in my bed and count,
staring into the darkness worried
what the hours would do
if I wasn’t awake to witness them.
The stakes were unbearable—
everyone I loved would grow old
and die.
Is the loss of time not our most constant fear? One might say the sentiment is common, however, when examined through the lens of a child, we find a new stone overturned.
Refreshing and unapologetic, Inconsolable Objects trills with purpose and compassion. One finds the true grit of this collection is its courageous spine and exemplary craft. The true gift is its complicity and reverence as in a line from the final section in the book, “Isn’t persistence beautiful?” Gomez poses the question, but she also answers it by writing a book of poetry that is persistent as it is beautiful.
