Buffalo Girl

In her arresting latest, Stark (Savage Pageant) remixes “Little Red Riding Hood” to explore the threats of patriarchy and her mother’s experience immigrating to the U.S. at the end of the Vietnam War. Drawing from versions of the fairy tale across centuries and continents, Stark considers the multicultural affinity for “stories about little girls in danger.” In some poems, the girl is Stark’s mother, looking for a way out of war-torn Vietnam: “Red sought another errand after// the collapse of her country’s face.// What would she give, a mouth/ asked, to secure safe passage?” Elsewhere, the girl becomes the story’s villain, as in “Impact Sport,” which begins, “By age 15 I was a hungry, red wolf.// I worked at JoAnn Fabrics one/ summer—scowling women forming// lines at the back of my hangover.” Intermingled with the violence of war is the violence of sexual assault and racism, particularly as experienced by a child: “I was genuinely curious, too... about mongoloid: a word// that sounded like a broken bird in flight so terrible and magnificent.” Accompanying the text are stunning mixed-media pieces made from the poet’s mother’s black-and-white photographs taken in Vietnam. This collection is a beautiful, formally inventive representation of diasporic longing and feminist resistance. (Apr.)