‘Middle Passage Messaging Service’
— Andrew Sargus Klein
Sometimes the world is one big coincidence, and maybe another word for coincidence is confirmation bias or, more simply, magic. I’m currently writing a review of a dance performance that at its heart is a celebration of black womanhood. It takes a non-linear form, which is perfect for its subtext of memory as an ephemeral and binding force across generations. And then I come across Nikki Wallschlaeger’s ‘Middle Passage Messaging Service,’ a gripping and relentless poem about trauma and memory. The title is somehow irreverent and sorrowful, cheeky and deadly serious. After two short but expansive sentences (“A word is an old story. One word, many stories / one body many bodies.”), the poem turns into a free associative thunderstorm, some 300 words with no punctuation (save for one colon) that builds up so much steam, so much emotional and existential momentum, I’m still not entirely sure how Wallschlaeger is able to find the ending she found—and all the more fitting that the poem doesn’t end with a period, lest the reader think the energies and histories contained in this poem could be contained to a few pages.