Blind Items - Dina Del Bucchia (Insomniac Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Blind Items.  Dina Del Bucchia.  Insomniac Press.  London, Ontario.  2014

These wildly funny poems will alter the way you look at celebrity for ever.  Dina Del Bucchia is a carnival freak amalgam of Anias Nin, Erica Jong and Dorothy Parker.

These poems are witty, highly sexualized and just a little bit bitchy.  I could listen to Bucchia talk all day long.

Lindsay Lohan

I am fucking Lindsay Lohan in the back of a pickup
truck, on an old sleeping bag printed with bass jumping
out of the water, hooks in their mouths. She is so
Hollywood she doesn’t even understand how real this
is, wants me to use my wrong hand, keeps telling me to
move my arm into the light, wants the shot to be perfect
on the first take. But it’s 2 a.m. behind the Walmart,
and I don’t know where my bra is. All we’ve managed
to do today is make out, shed our clothes, and split a
microwave burrito. She keeps giving me advice on how
to best show off her crotch in the scene, that a movie
crotch shot is so very different from a paparazzi up-skirt.
Both are choreographed but have different techniques.
She moves like a new kitten, brushes against my breasts.
I can’t ignore her. She whispers in my ear that cocaine
is almost always free, that mustard brings out her
freckles, that touching another person is like stepping
on a scale, that if you smell cinnamon, there is probably
a baby being born. I’m taken in. Between the folds of a
sleeping bag older than she is, she’s chosen me. When I
go to put my mouth around her nipple, she stops me;
my shoulder will be in the way of the shot. We glow in
the heavy lights of the parking lot

...

Imagination is a wonderful thing.  From now on I'm going to imagine that the wickedly hilarious and darkly comic Del Bucchia is my buddy.  Why?  This woman got game.

I passed this book around the office and everyone laughed, snickered, bickered, and now they are taking turns reading them, the poems, out loud.

Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson isolates stakes, produces, is adept
at turning words into phrases that turn women
into moulds of other women.

I don't want to become anyone else. Well, maybe
Anjelica Houston, just for a few months in the '70s.
To wear my hair like a shield

against regret, the quiet torture of never being
on top. To hear his secrets before he became
a voice to imitate. A woman's sadness makes him run.

When we meet, we kiss, share a few hours of afternoon
sun on our skin. I keep my hair up, keep him up
with small licks and slaps,

crease my body into his, so I feel
small, supermodel tiny. Afterwards, I weep, spray tears,
use his Lakers jacket as a tissue. A good fake cry.

Flustered and pink with stress, he flees.
If I kept a scorecard,
I'd check a box beside"Legend".

...

Dina Del Bucchia makes her dreams read like photo-op poems, sparkling, witty and immediate.

But let us not forget that these are all smart "hypermodern" confessional poems of the first flight.

Reading these poems there is so much amusement in play you don't realize how heavy fame can be. How dark those corners of the mind can get.  Good thing we have Bucchia for illumination.

Kate Moss

Kate Moss wants me to understand her. Some call her
reptilian. The description misses the point of her sharp-
ness, edge of nose, creases that spank her eyes. She isn't
glossy, likes to be rubbed raw. Together, lounging in the
sway of the sea, perched on sailboat corners, we are
lizards, we are flamingos, we are Bengals. Our hands
touch and slip away, mouths form silent words only
when they meet. We read lips through lips. We lay each
other to waste in our sunlight flashbulb lust. Makeup
smeared against our navels, thighs, under sides of arms, our
bodies mutated in colour. Breasts greet and swing away.
Below our bodies, the wooden deck is streaked with
pinks, blues, greens, pools of colour made of cosmetics
and ocean spray. I want to shrink to the size of the bright
mole near her nipple. She wants me to pull love out of
her, for us to wear each other, skin for skin.

...

Everyone in our office is now in love with Dina Del Bucchia.  Literary lust at least.

These poems are just like Rice Krispies, they snap, crackle and pop.

Dina Del Bucchia

(photo:  Ruth Skinner)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dina Del Bucchia writes, and does many other things, in Vancouver. Her short story “Under the ‘I’” was a finalist for the 2012 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her previous poetry collection is Coping with Emotions and Otters (Talonbooks, 2013). 

BLURBS

"In Blind Items, Dina Del Bucchia reverse-engineers the public persona of celebrities to reveal the mouth like ‘hospital Jell-O, perfect in a place full of despair.’ [...] These poems will pick you up on Page Six and leave you gasping at the side of the highway, filthy, sweaty, and breathless."

     — Nikki Reimer, author of DOWNVERSE and [sic]

     

"Del Bucchia deftly dodges revealing her sources and leaves the reader in the morning groping after whatever it is that poems should do in the wake of such humorous, intimate, and intelligent company. Blind Items is a must-read for understanding the impact of celebrity culture on how we relate to each of our others (or otters)."

     — Jason Christie, author of Unknown Actor and i-ROBOT

insomniacpress.com 

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