Pink Plastic House by Kristin Garth Maverick Duck Press, 2017 Picture a house, one composed in the same imagery of a dollhouse. A structure built on the foundations of pink plastic walls and filled with pink plastic rooms, and every corner tells a story; the end result is Kristin Garth’s Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press, 2017). Pink Plastic House is a fabulist manifesto, cut and ripped from the temporal pages of one’s own yesteryear. Pages, only to be rebuilt as a monument to sonnets of heartbreak and trauma. Each sonnet opens up another doorway, beyond each one, is a new realm of memory waiting to be released from bottled emotion. In regards to these realms, Garth does a superb job at re-imagining these spatial dimensions through the best of times and worst of times. Through the use of this space, the work is separated into eight different fragments; a kitchen, bedroom, basement, library, media room, swing set, garden, and a graveyard. The house slowly deconstructs its confines into a space far deeper than mere inanimate environments. Fore, there is life inside this open book residence. In the first section, Kitchen, there is the second poem, “Sex Doll.” Garth speaks of cinnamon crafted goodies in this piece and bakes a helping of graphic motion: You teach the words and all of the movements. Make them need me just like you do. Make me sound all done, cooked through, a girl okay to take when I’m as lost a thing as I was found As the pattern trickles, so does the movement from one space to the other. From passing through a kitchen of bittersweet edibles, to a library, holding a myriad of misunderstood creatures, the story takes a step outside. Swingset is a perfect example showing this. The poem “Happy Princess” speaks of reluctant musings from a past life of abuse, and projects the words left unsaid in this confrontation: I played your happy princess. Rule, reward bestowed like butterscotch unwrapped. You place inside an ever open mouth. Adored, adorned in sailor dresses, braids. My face you rearrange with rules requesting smiles… As readers, Garth holds our hands tightly on this journey through a subconscious labyrinth of pain, pleasure and anything in between. Regardless of the space, whether indoor or outdoor, Garth takes us to a place, beyond personal soliloquies and environmental tangents. Pink Plastic House is a world of its own, one explored for the truth it projects rather than the image it tries to uphold. Visit Kristin Garth's Website Visit Maverick Duck Press' Website

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