Today, a re-read of a book I’ve carried with me ever since I first read it in 2021: Alexis Almeida’s I Have Never Been Able to Sing, published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2018.
When I say I’ve carried I Have Never Been Able to Sing with me, I really mean it. I’ll be sitting at my desk and think of a line, or a feeling. I’ll be working through an internal moment with a character and stop to wonder how it might fit into Almeida’s never have I ever framework. And, today, though I tried to read another chapbook first, I had to come back to this one, because it was all I wanted all day.
I don’t recall if, when I read this book first, parts of Almeida’s self jumped out at mine quite like they did today, but as I read them this time I saw myself over and over again, throughout the poem’s lines. Almeida often straddles the line of uncertainty and decisiveness, a line I know painfully well. Maybe it is one with which many of us with anxiety issues are familiar? Since I’ve only lived in my head, I can’t say. But I can tell you that, like Almeida, “I am scared of being alone, though / around other people I often want to leave.”
Almeida’s commentary about (cis) women’s bodies and women’s health struck a nerve this time as well. It runs like a thread throughout I Have Never Been Able to Sing, from mentions of catcalls and the “utility” of a body to the costs of womanhood in the American healthcare system:
I don’t / believe being a woman should make my medical / bills more expensive, thought I have been told to / accept it.
I know I will read I Have Never Been Able to Sing again, because I know I will carry it with me, just as I have carried it since August 2021—and I know that, when I read it again, it will be even more rich and will carry even greater depth.
Essentially a Nerd 