I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times by Taylor Byas Review by J.B. Stone
I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times
by Taylor Byas
Review by J.B. Stone
Publication: Soft Skull Press
Publication Date: August 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781593767419
Pages: 128
Navigating Black Joy: Review of I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times by Taylor Byas
I’m probably not the first to sing my praise for Chicago’s endless output of emerging poets, and Taylor Byas’s I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times shows why I won’t be the last. Byas’s debut full-length collection of poems, published last summer, provides much more than a mere window-view into the heart of Chicago’s Black community. Inspired by the classic musical, The Wiz, Byas forges her own geography, utilizing her own individual experiences growing up on Chicago’s south side to illustrate that complex bridge between the collective and the individual. Byas goes through seven different sections, all of which acts as a poetic mind-map. Joy, one of the most standout features in that mind-map, redefines itself throughout. However, along with happiness, Byas’s evokes other feelings normally not associated within the realm of joy. Feelings such as grief, awe, and trauma all find a place here. The latter of those feelings, trauma makes its presence from the start, in Section I: The Feeling That We Have. Specifically the poem, “Corner Store.” It starts out as a fond slipstream to the sublime sensory that only a corner store can bring about:
………………the quarter bags of chips I’d buy and flip
………………for profit in our sock-rot locker rooms,
………………the frosted glass doors with their fingerprints
………………and drinks I dreamed to taste-test on porch steps.
Towards the end of the poem, these memories are morphed into a triggering, yet necessary narrative on the realities of misogynoir, as Byas recounts:
………………Older men who gummed out baby girl, with smoke
………………and corn chip breath they offered like candy.
………………I ain’t your baby girl, your sweet thang, your
………………nothing. At checkout, the man before me
………………opens his 40,
…………………the fear that flowers in my belly when
………………he slaps my ass, follows me halfway home.
Byas in these final lines, refuses to withhold her trauma underneath blankets of flowery subtleties and gatekept language.
In Section I: The Feeling that We Have and Section III: Poppy Girls, the themes of misogynoir find their way into unexpected places, following the three poems, How to Pray, Early Teachings, and South Side III. “How to Pray,” crosses the intersectional lens of fundamental Christian indoctrination with the onslaught of diet culture onto those living with body image issues. There are scenes comparing a weight scale to a confessional booth, as Byas reads, “a choir / of judgment… / does that make this square of glass / a god? I suppose this is something / like the Catholic mass.” (32)
These toxic expectations are more subtle, but they make their presence known. There are moments of shame & repentance conveyed in every line. Two forces cast their values as something good or holy, a distinctive feature of an infrastructure designed to subjugate Black Women. “The Early Teachings” also does its part at confronting the religious commandeering of such bodies, starting with the lines, “The Catholic school says, Cover your shoulders / because the boys may be tempted by your flesh,” and ending with the lines, “…It’s your responsibility. Remember, / the Catholic school says, Cover your shoulders.” (9) These meshing concepts of patriarchal body expectations, and Christian indoctrination, all circle back to the relentless theme of misogynoir.
“South Side III,” a poem which continues throughout each of the six sections of Byas’s collection. It starts with a scene of two alleged lovers in the backseat, turns into an illustration of the predatory ways men objectify Black Women: “A spidered map beginning at the top of your thigh / drawn by the fingers of a boy you know / is up to no good. And now he’s trying to ply / you open in a back seat with his sly talk—No.” (34) The rest of the poem unravels like a burning tapestry of trauma, as a whole thread of incelious behavior unfolds:
………………….We together
………………or not?—after a week of this, of him licking
………………his fingers after he dips into you like a jar
………………of honey.
…………………He’ll come for one of your girls too, pull his car
………………up to your stoop and offer her a “ride” in his Jeep…
For readers whose lives fall outside of such margins, Byas provides an in-depth portrait of the straining, lingering dangers in the lives of Black Women.
Although the themes of misogynoir may linger, they don’t consume the poetic slipstream. In fact, happiness isn’t devoid here. A wonderful example is found in “When the Air Conditioning Breaks.” There are several shining moments of jubilee, moments unafraid to make do with the cards one is dealt with. There are memories of being a kid again in the Rustbelt summer swelter, a universalist moment for those of us in households where A/C was a scarce luxury, Byas reminisces:
………………We discover home-grown auto-tune and yawp
………………our Vaselined lips mere inches from the box fan’s
………………lattice—the flowered blades compute and swap
………………our breaths for robot, monotone.
If Byas’s poem, “Don’t Go Getting Nostalgic,” is any indication, these moments of happiness are not escape routes, not attempts to hide the truth under some rosy bouquet, but temporal breaks from the understandable hardship conveyed in a landscape of confessional.
“The Way a Chicago Summer Comes,” one of the last poems, tucked into the final section, Section VII: Believe In Yourself depicts similar moments of optimism, but slightly more hard-won. The poem compares the arrival of summer weather in Chicago to a heaving mother dog, giving birth to her pups. It’s apropos that the poem ends, “…a relief, an echo / of my unspoken prayers.”
Presenting a masterful adherence to confessional language and immersive imagery, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, does its part in bridging unapologetic catharsis with communal pride. The warming haven of a grandmother’s household, or the relentless palpitations of a romance gone wrong, or the bittersweet glints of exposition, there are no subtleties in Byas’s poetics. Byas’s work conveys all of the vulnerable, messy truths that ride out the turbulent spectrum of Black joy in the heart of the windy city.
Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature, an Editorial Board Member for Beloit Poetry Journal, and an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press. She is the author of two chapbooks, her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, from Soft Skull Press, which won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award and the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and Resting Bitch Face, forthcoming in Fall of 2025. She is also a co-editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins.
J.B. Stone (he/they) is a Neurodivergent/Autistic teaching artist, spoken word poet, writer, and critic from Brooklyn, NY now residing in Buffalo, NY. He serves as Founding EIC/Reviews Editor at Variety Pack and reads flash fiction for Split Lip Magazine. J.B.’s writing has appeared in Rain Taxi, Atticus Review, Chicago Review of Books, Up the Staircase Quarterly among other spaces. You can find more of his work at jb-stone.com, and can follow their twitter @JB_StoneTruth.
8 May 2024
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