capricornucopia (the dream of the goats) by paulA neves
by Allison Bird Treacy
In the history of feminism, the kitchen is a sacred space. Indeed, as Barbara Smith once said, “the kitchen is the center of the home, the place where women in particular work and communicate with each other,” and in paulA neves’ 2018 chapbook capricornucopia (dream of the goats), the kitchen takes center stage from the very first poem, “Graciete.” Writing through the memory of the family kitchen as she does many times in the collection, neves’ spacious lines breathe out –
I will listen to her
just once morewhile she cradles the blade
in one handinsisting that I
unravel.
The final stanzas of this poem set up a larger conceit for the collection, a combination of displeasure with the speaker mixed with a desire to understand her that runs counter to the speaker’s desire for inclusion in family traditions. That a certain degree of undoing is necessary to be legible as a same-sex attracted, gender non-conforming woman within an immigrant family is understood. As such, the blade that peels the potatoes also slices through the self-presentation of the speaker, though is does so tenderly as the hand “cradles the blade.”
One of the poems in which neves’ is most revealing about her relationship to family, gender, and sexuality, is the title poem, “Capricornucopia (The Dream of the Goats).” Centered on a family Christmas gathering, the goats are, at first glance, a destructive force, storming the house and chewing through the couches. What the speaker quickly reveals, however, is that her gender presentation is the real source of disruption. As goats eat the ornaments, the speaker hears a voice in her ear,
“Androgyny went out in the ‘80s,
when you were still young,”
…
I hoped it was the voice of the devil
I didn’t know — a future lover perhaps,
her flutes as piercing, her heart as cloven
as any Pan I could ask for (and have).But it was only my mother,
Here, the speaker exists in complex relation to Pan, the highly sexualized half-goat shepherd god who falls in love with a wood-nymph — she wishes for a lover like Pan, but she is also an androgynous figure, as per the mother’s accusation. Indeed, the mother goes on to directly compare the speaker to the goats, and to Pan by proxy, saying that
… “You’re starting to get whiskers,
just like them.”
Tender, the words went through me like a horn.
The speaker is clearly loved, and yet her gender manages to be as much of a disruption around the table as the goats eating the couch during the family Christmas party. Still, the speaker is deeply comfortable with her own illegibility, and this is reflected in the way that she welcomes the goats. The speaker is gentle with them, as they clear the table with cannibalistic revelry, consuming the goat stew. “Let them be goats,” she says. “Let them eat everything — / even the bones.”
In a collection preoccupied with history and consumed by loss — many of the poems center on hospitals or are preoccupied by aging and death — this incantation is ultimately what the speaker wishes for herself. She wants to consume everything, whether that means turning back time to learn the family recipes or to pursue a lost lover. Though they may appeal most to those struggling to find their place at the table, these are poems for anyone who wants to devour life, who is hungry and seeks to be filled.
