Review: Saachi Gupta’s ‘sad girls bleed hot words’ Tears A Piece From Your Heart
“Somebody told me that grief
Doesn't have to be about death.
We grieve places, and schedules,
And times when everything felt right.” (4)
UNTANGLING THE MESSINESS OF LOVE, QUEERNESS, GRIEF, AND THE PAIN OF SURVIVING DAY TO DAY — Saachi Gupta turns those feelings into something whole and new in her first poetry collection, sad girls bleed hot words. Each poem tells a complete story while simultaneously connecting to each other in the same way difficult days pile together until they feel like a single endless one.
The first poem, “Comic Strips,” gives readers a glimpse into a relationship as it changes and fades. In the beginning, the narrator says, “I saw your mouth shift at the mention of Mary Oliver / And felt a fondness for this poet I’d never known, / This poet I’d never read but seemed to know everything about because I knew everything about you” (2). Gupta writes about how losing someone affects the ability to love the same things they did, and the ways in which relationships ending resembles other forms of grief, stating at the end of the poem: “losing you was no less than grief / And never reading a new text about Mary Oliver / Feels like watching my grandmother turn cold” (4).
In “false alarms,” Gupta brings up Mary Oliver once again in the line “reading mary oliver to friends and foes / without me,” portraying the ways in which the idea of people lingers even after they are gone (18).
Along with describing the complexity of relationships, Gupta accurately writes about the confusing sensations of existing in a body, such as the line “The first day I put a cigarette between my parched lips, / I leave with my tongue feeling alien in my mouth” in “this poem is my ashtray & you, my cigarette burn” (7). She combines these themes at times, filling the title poem with images of “tears fizz[ing] between her legs,” straightened spines, and red eyes as “you love her for the last time” (12).
“Sour” is one of the strongest poems visually, touching on identity, place, and relationships while resembling a jam recipe. The first and last stanzas mirror each other, both starting with “In Germany they make their own jam,” yet the first states, “So, in Germany, they must be better people; / Not like me: in the Indian city of untouchable dreams, / Enabling capitalism / Because I ordered mine from a known brand at a chain store—” while the last ends with the line “But in the Indian city of untouchable dreams, / I would still let you press your fingernails into me: / Sticky juice on your hands— / Until we sour, rot, and bleed of each other” (9, 11).
What is most impressive about “Sour” is how much it contains in so few pages, blending imagery of fruits cooking in a pan with the feeling of “I hate you for everything you did / But most of all, I hate you for taking you away from me” (10).
Every poem in Gupta’s debut collection is worth reading again and again. sad girls bleed hot words resembles what so many people go through trying to love another person and find themselves, all while having its own unique perspective. Gupta writes as if she has pulled out the thoughts from her reader’s chest and placed them on the page, raw and cut open.
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