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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
VS: Rachel McKibbens vs. Endings

Danez Smith: She’s the Tila Tequila of American poetry, Franny Choi!

Franny Choi: And they’re an excellent poet and terrible pandemic celibate, Danez Smith!

Danez Smith: And you’re listening to VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them. Yes, Franny Choi is correct. As soon as I got that second shot of Moderna, I said, all bets are off.

Franny Choi: Oh, no! God! You’re an incel, like, in no world are you staying celibate.

Danez Smith: No. (LAUGHS) Incapable of celibacy, yes.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHING) Incapable of celibacy. Yeah, that’s you.

Danez Smith: It only works because I have a partner who is just as vaccinated and a hoe as me, so. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: That’s true love, or truly worrisome. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah, you know, same thing. What is love, but not a concern? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) If not a health concern for your friends and family?

Danez Smith: (LAUGHING) Exactly.

Franny Choi: Oh, my goodness.

Danez Smith: Don’t worry, it’s not gonna end how you think it’s gonna end. It will end lovely. You know, thinking about this, right, Franny, are you—are there any endings that actually leave you, like, satisfied? And not just like, you know, TV and film, right? But like, are there anything that like, ends or stops, let’s say that you find in like a particularly satisfying way? Like good end to a relationship, or like good end to like a—

Franny Choi: Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure that a good end to a relationship exists. I believe in the existence of that, you know?

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Not in your research.

Franny Choi: I haven’t seen it personally, but I, you know, I believe in the theory. But recently, I was looking at the website for an organization that, like, operates in Atlanta, a kind of like grassroots movement org. And they were talking about how like, this was their sunset year. You know, they’d been in operation for maybe five or 10 years or something. And they were like, our work has come to a close, like, as an organization. And so we are going to spend this next year shutting down and like closing this chapter of our work. And I think the idea of a sunset year for your organization or for your program, and like, making sure to take that year to do that intentionally, like, I don’t know what it entailed, and I have no idea whether that sunset year was like, you know, a really beautiful one, or whether it was like a total crash and burn. Like, I don’t know, but I love the idea of that, actually.

Danez Smith: The concept is beautiful. 

Franny Choi: Yeah. I think so, yeah. But what about you? What’s a good ending?

Danez Smith: You had such an eloquent and beautiful answer. And I’m about to be trash, so.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: What I literally thought about was in a relationship, like, don’t need like the last of something, right? Like, you know, I was thinking about like, little things like the last chicken wing, or piece of chocolate. I am so willing to, like, give that to my partner, even though I know that wing tastes really good.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And that my partner doesn’t really like wings like that, like, you know, I’m like, you know what, because it will make you happy, you can have it, you know? And my boo is the corny person that will like, notice that shit. But, last word. Oh, no. Nobody’s getting the last word over Danez.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I don’t even have to have a point anymore. I can have like been like, admittedly proven wrong, and I will still find a way to be like, “But bitch!—” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Like in an argument?

Danez Smith: “Okay, you were right. But still, no!” (LAUGHS) “I didn’t like the way you said what you were correct at.” 

Franny Choi: Wow! If you don’t get the last word then that’s not satisfying for you.

Danez Smith: Yeah, giving the last wing, satisfying for everyone. But like, getting the last word, satisfying only for me. Maybe detrimental to my relationship.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Danez Smith: So, and maybe that’s all that matters, right? (LAUGHS) But that’s also the thing, too, like, I’m starting to recalibrate and be like, okay, like, Danez, will this choice be like, pettily satisfying for you as an individual, but end horribly for your relationship? Like, you know, is there a way to like, have a mutually beneficial satisfaction in terms of your—

Franny Choi: Oh my God, that’s amazing. And I now want somebody to go through all of the episodes of VS and say how many episodes, the episode was over and Danez just said, like, abada! You know? Just some little thing at the end to be like, make sure I have the last word.

Danez Smith: Yeah, exactly!

Franny Choi: Like, “Okay, bye!” (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I have to make a sound, you know, whatever the fuck, you know? After everybody’s done clapping at the good line at the poetry slam, I still gotta go, “Mm-hmm,” like loud. I’m just that nigga.

Franny Choi: Are you a last clapper? 

Danez Smith: No, but you know what I do know, I’m the first one out. I’m like, I decide when we stop clapping.

Franny Choi: Ohh! (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: In my head! I’m just like, “Okay, and now we stop, y’all.” And there’s like three more claps. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I’m like, everybody’s waiting on my signal to like, begin the ending of the clapping. I feel like the clap orchestrator. I’m a first clapper. I’m definitely a first clapper. But then like, I’m like okay, and everybody see, and I’m (CLAPS). We’re ending. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh my god. It’s the same energy as like a dad who, whenever they go in front of like an automatic sliding door, you know, they like do the wave of their arm. And then it’s like, “Haha, I did it magically, I opened the doors!” Do you do that too? (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah. (LAUGHS) I do do that sometimes!

Franny Choi: Oh my god.

Danez Smith: It just gives me such satisfaction. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh, god.

Danez Smith: Oh no, I’m a dad.

Franny Choi: You are a dad. And I love it. I love it so much. Well, going back to this idea of like having the last word, I think that sometimes being able to get to that ending, that like very last thing that’s possible to say is really satisfying. And then there’s also like, that like, thrilling sexiness of like, just pulling back right before that thing, you know, like just leaving them hanging a little bit. There’s like a sort of deliciousness of that. And our guest for today, Rachel McKibbens, the poet, the legend, the witch queen mother of us all, talked about the kind of like magic that happens in writing and delivering a poem that stops just short of actually reaching that satisfying big climactic ending that we might expect. And what kind of like happens in that empty space between the poet and the audience member when you stop a poem rather than ending it. And we talked about so many other things in this interview, about writing in the aftermath of endings, in the aftermath of traumatic and tragic events, what it means to be in touch with your own wickedness as a writer, and as a person. And then also, sort of like what happens when you are a fighter, and what happens when you realize that part of your healing necessitates surrendering to the world and to the powers around you. So this is a really incredibly special conversation with one of our, our longtime heroes, Rachel McKibbens, who showed us, I know, Danez and me both, and also like, so many of our peers and friends, a way to be in this world as poets, as queer poets of color, and as people who have survived all that that entails.

Danez Smith: Wow, Franny, I’m gonna miss hearing you summarize what we talked about.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Aw.

Danez Smith: It’s truly a pleasure to witness it every time. But still seriously, Rachel McKibbens, all these bitches, bitches being us, is her sons.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) All these bitches right here on this podcast.

Danez Smith: Yeah, all the bitches that host this podcast.

Franny Choi: Are her sons.

Danez Smith: Are her sons. And her daughters. Rachel McKibbens is a queer Chicana writer and two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow. She is the author of three full-length books of poetry, Blood from Copper Canyon, Pink Elephants, and Into the Dark and Emptying Field, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. For years McKibbens taught poetry through the Healing Arts program at Bellevue Hospital and continues to teach creative writing and lecture across the country as an advocate for mental health awareness and victims of violence and sexual abuse. In 2012, McKibbens founded the Pink Door Writing Retreat, a week-long writing intensive held exclusively for non-men writers of color. McKibbens is a member of Latinas Unidas and hosts the reading series Poetry and Pie Night out of her bar, The Spirit Room, in upstate New York. Y’all, we can’t even gush anymore. This is truly, truly a wonderful interview, one that I hope that you sit down and really open up your heart with, and leave a little bit more dangerous. And so with no further ado, here is Rachel McKibbens with a poem.

(SOUND EFFECT)

Rachel McKibbens: 

(READS POEM)

one more time, with feeling

When I was nineteen

I stole a gun. The drug dealer

next door, blitzed out

of her skull, didn't 

see me

pull it from her

kitchen cupboard.

As the California sun

sank below the

foothills, I haunted

the neighborhood,

screaming your

doomed name. 

I was ready.

A death-wish Romeo

beneath your bedroom 

window. Split once

a neighbor threatened

to call the cops. 

I never told you this story.

Not because I regret 

what I did, was prepared

to do—those forty-five

minutes of havoc, hunting

down your head. 

Back then, I wasn't shit. 

Just electrified violence.

All fists, piss & safety pins, 

an unwed teenage mother

with no address.

You had parents. Freckles. 

A three-story house. I'd listen

to you spit your angsty

fiction while I slept in parks 

& ate from garbage cans. 

When I learned you were

coveting the man I loved,

I felt my insides darken,

cursed your well-fed

royalty disguised as grit.

Got tired of the forgery,

wanted all the black-eyed 

wealth to myself:

BANG, you're dead. 

Wish I could say I've put

those days behind me,

that I never fall into

the steel-weight daydream

of a gun's hard lesson.

1995—half my life ago—still,

every time you call

to bitch about your latest

ex-soulmate or DUI,

one more kid taken

from you by the state

I want to tell you

about the only night

you survived.

When something

said fall asleep 

& you did.

Crashed hard

with a starving bitch

& pistol at the ready,

birds still singing

in the half daylight.

I'll say it here, right now, 

one more time, with feeling:

it was the only moment

in this wretched life

a god was on my side. 

Danez Smith: Whew!

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) I remember y’all hearing this poem for the first time.

Danez Smith: I think it was at a Rust Belt.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Rachel McKibbens: It sure was. And I had to stop and say like, “Don’t you fucking record this.”

Danez Smith: Yes! (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah. Yeah, because what was wild was, this was gonna be out in print. And I, my friend, who this is about, still follows me on Insta. And I don’t know why, I just felt really bashful about her knowing I was going to shoot her in the head.

Franny Choi: Weird. Weirdly.

Danez Smith: Have y’all talked about it? Has she read the poem?

Rachel McKibbens: No, no, we just don’t talk about it. Which is weird, because she had posted that she bought the book on her Instagram. And I was really interested in if she saw herself in that, because it’s so specific. I write plenty of work where I want more than one person to see themself in it. But this one was so specific, and I name like physical attributes, you know, where she lived. And even if she does recognize herself, she knows that that’s a former place, the speaker of the poem, which of course is me, doesn’t reside necessarily still in that spot. But, you know, I think as someone whose lineage is absolute violence, it’s important for me to name that shit, especially like, just as a woman in the world, as a mom, to deny those facets of my existence would be an absolute dishonor to who I’ve become now. Less shooty.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Progress. Progress, you know? Growth.

Rachel McKibbens: Growth, absolutely. Yeah, there’s this poet, Steve, god, I feel terrible not remembering, but he had a line, “I prefer the intimacy of a knife fight.” And I’ve never forgotten it. Forgot his last name. But I’ve never forgotten that line. Because the Mexican in me is like, yes, I can write poems with a razor blade under my left tit and we’re fine. Things are great. But that’s just how I exist in the world. And I think that people mistake poets for being nonviolent? 

Danez Smith: Talk about that.

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah! That’s a major mistake, I believe, you know? And if we’ve learned anything within our own community, you know, we are just as capable of harm, if not more inventive harm, than anyone else.

Franny Choi: Oh, my god.

Danez Smith: Worse than a violent nigga is a violent nigga with an imagination, right? (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think of the stories I would hear from my uncles who were all chronically incarcerated, you know, gang members and drug dealers, and the pure imagination of the violence within the prison system, as well as the gang violence that happened—my uncle’s best friend messed around with, you know, the Mexican mafia. And when his body was found, it was absolutely what I would consider poetic what they did to him. I think that that kind of imagery is why so much of that presses itself hard into the framework of my writing. I like to believe that there’s a very visceral energy to the images that I allow to inhabit my work. And, you know, I grew up a latchkey kid and cinema was my mother. And I like to have a very cinematic feel to the work. I need folks to feel as if they are a very captive audience, or trapped. (LAUGHS) You know, because there’s a difference in those two.

Franny Choi: Yeah. I mean, I remember like, hearing you read that poem and just like, having that experience of being, you know, it’s so cliché to say, at the edge of my seat, but literally like, my whole body tense, like, trying to catch every word to know what was going to happen. It’s actually like a rare thing, you know, to be able to make that effect happen. I mean, it goes back, I think also like, to Pink Elephant. Like, I remember reading Pink Elephant and being like—it was the first book of poetry where I just felt like I could not look away and like, had to keep reading. It was the first time I like, read a whole book in one sitting and was like, I don’t know that like a book of poems could do this to me, like, give me this, this feeling.

Rachel McKibbens: Thank you for that. I get told more often than not that people have to put it down constantly, which I completely understand. I have never read, with the exception of when I did that really ridiculous like, poetry telephon to raise money for a morgage during lockdown—

Franny Choi: Oh my god.

Rachel McKibbens: And I read all of my books in a row. Like, that was the first time I had ever allowed for myself to read Pink Elephant front to back. I’d never done that. I’d lived it. I wrote it. There was no need to revisit. I don’t know how many people sit and read their books. I worked too long on mine. I was sick of it for a long time. But um, I love my poems to stop instead of end. And I think it’s, it’s the level of momentum in that work that allows the reader to kind of come to their own conclusion. Or, you know, it designs for them this like, wicked little journey that they are more interested in, in excavating something out of their own selves. Because I think that a lot of people imagine that I grew up and was raised by monsters, but I wasn’t. I was raised by incredibly, horrifically human people. Humans are the most frightening creatures on the planet. And it’s important for me to also honor wickedness. You know, as poets, we’re so often willing to hold something up and be witness to it. But I like the instability of confessing my own ugly. I like that the rules that I’ve created for myself are to never be presented as … I don’t want to say approachable, because sure, I’d like folks to come up to me until I don’t. But I don’t shy away from appearing dangerous. And I don’t want my art to be governed by any binaries whatsoever. You know, I’m not good or evil. And to be categorized as such prevents me access to self-exploration, examination, correction, healing, growth. Like, I’m free enough, you know, I’m 45 now. I am a free bitch. I’m big and free enough to carry the entire spectrum of humaneness within me. And, you know, the magic within my craft, and the lessons gained from my lived experiences, is my choosing not to give in to the chaotic voice of trauma and violence that wants so much to be the driver of my living, but instead just a passenger, and never a backseat driver. I do my best to not allow those things to take hold. 10 years ago, this would be a different conversation, I’ve been able to acquire a level of control, that me, as a traumatized person, as someone who has bipolar disorder, CPTSD, I need the stillness that healing requires. In the beginning of writing, I wanted to just dive into the chaos and name it all. But, as I’ve learned over the years, it’s impossible to write from the eye of the hurricane, right? Like in order to assess the damage, in order to name the aftermath, you have to be far away from it enough to survey that isn’t in the language of fear.

Danez Smith: You just spoke so eloquently about your craft, but also just like a lot about personal growth. And I’m wondering, one, could you explain a little bit further what you mean by poems stopping instead of ending? And then, I’m wondering, if that was a tool for you to write Pink Elephant, do you still feel like that concept is true for you, being a completely different woman?

Rachel McKibbens: Oh, absolutely. And I have always said that I like to write from the aftermath point of view instead of within. And again, it’s all swirling around. Nothing comes to an end. Like even when we die, there’s just this other energy and it moves to a different—for me anyways, these are my beliefs. And so, for a poem to stop, I don’t think it’s my duty to provide the reader a pat ending. As someone who had a background in slam poetry, who read poems that stopped and didn’t end, it made my work very divisive. So I love that I have that background, because it always allowed me—when someone is giving you between a zero and a 10 on the same poem, I love the way it makes, it frustrates people, but I am more interested in, okay, so when you feel uncomfortable with this, the way this poem stopped, where are you taking that? Like, how are you as a human receiving this narrative? And how do you allow it to end? How do you want it to? What are you going to do in the fucking world, to enable the woman in that poem who spoke to fucking exist and be free as possible and be liberated from patriarchal violence, from abuse, from oppressive entities, like, that’s what I mean by that. Like, I really don’t ever think that there’s any story I could ever tell that has an ending, because I’m still working shit out. Like, there are things within Pink Elephant, which is now a 10-year-old book—it’s going to be re-released August 2022, on Button. You know, that was a different person who wrote those poems, of course, I was a much younger writer. There was a level of fearlessness that I, I still have. But I think the book very much shows like, someone needing to get it out of their body. And I feel like, for a lot of readers, it jumped from my body and into theirs, and like, they were being attacked and had to, like, get away from the shit. (LAUGHS) And I get that. I just think that to allow my art to provide a platform for my wickedness, for my, the ways I have been a harmful human to another, the ways that I have survived my father, have survived being orphaned by my mother’s schizophrenia. You know, I’m still working that out. So, how can you ever say that anything in my life has ever really come to an end? It always just stops. And I just believe in that level of momentum, and for the reader to have to pick it up and decide for themself where to take it.

Franny Choi: Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect sense, because it opens a space to ask that, for that person who’s listening or reading, to ask that “now what” question, which is like a question of responsibility. This was like, the thing about Pink Elephant. Like, the reason that I said I couldn’t look away was that ugliness. I felt like I was like, seeing some ugly part of myself reflected back to me in a way that was like, an enormous relief, you know, like, this recognition of like, “Oh, I’m allowed to exist, like, I’m allowed to be here,” you know, and, yeah, it creates a space for that.

Rachel McKibbens: I appreciate you saying that. There’s a poem in there, “Tomboy”, that is the story of when I stole a mermaid from the beach and trapped her in my closet. And it was called “Tomboy” because, what I wanted to do was sort of capture what it was like to not feel the gender I was assigned at birth, like it just didn’t match who I was. And because I was an angry and violent child, I assumed, “Well, that must make me a boy. I’m gonna grow up to be a man one day, because, you know, I’m this.” And I was always called a tomboy as a kid. And I wanted to show that like, even a mermaid that’s half woman, half fish is more, you know, like, has more femininity than me. And looking back at it now, I had thought that it had more to do with not understanding or recognizing the gender I’d been assigned. But now I just realize it was actually more about my very first girlfriend, Kim, who I had in junior high, who was the epitome of femininity. I mean, she was sent to the principal’s office all of the time for the clothes she wore. Always skin-tight, always had holes on the side, like, just not appropriate at all for seventh grade, you know? And really, what I was trying to do was kill that girlness and that womanness that endangered her. Based on how I grew up, where I grew up, and what I had seen in media, I knew that she was just like this walking siren, just saying, “kill me kill me kill me at any time.” And so I chose to kill. What’s interesting is that, when people started calling her “lesbo,” I, you know, big fucking rugged Rachel Camacho, beat her up, because she was lesbian. She was my girlfriend. When you think about all that internalized homophobia, and how, in order to not ever be accused of the very thing you are, you try to do everything to erase what’s around you that resembles you or that can in some way expose you. A lot of the work in Pink Elephant does that. It’s got this level of like, exposure, it wants to reveal how we, how so much of our self-hatred comes back and we wound the other. And, you know, I don’t want to ever come out as clean in the end of any book. I just want folks to understand that even through mythological creatures, even through like, fantastic elements, you know, I am being as honest as I can. I’m not letting the data or the facts or the truth get in the way of me being honest.

Danez Smith: I mean, but here’s the thing, right? We talked about like, violent people with imaginations, right? And like, I feel like that. I love to throw hands. I actually want to say like—

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: One of my, one of my favorite conversations to have with old Black people is about how people don’t fight or stab anymore, and about how the neighborhoods’d be better if people stopped having guns and just like—

Rachel McKibbens: It’s a lost art. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: It is a lost art. And it’s a loss, because at one, right, you can’t—there’s no missing with a fist or with a knife, right? You know, there’s no bystander that gets hit. There was like, “I want you to hurt. And I gotta get close to you to do that.”

Rachel McKibbens: Absolutely. And what’s even greater is that you commit this like, moment, right? This is me as like, you know, fuckin’ former chola who would fight people and their parents. Like, it was bad. I think that it’s just so much more respectful, right? Just come up. We have beef, sock, sock, sock, boom, boom. And then that’s it. It’s actually squashed.

Danez Smith: Yeah. We’re done.

Rachel McKibbens: We got that shit out. We can actually grow! Yeah, we can move on now. It’s cool. Like, there isn’t this like, this giant fucking piece of like, aggro energy that’s waiting to like, spit nails at any bystander. It’s just beef between us. We’re done. Like, if I could just slap Tony Hoagland, everything would be great. Like, his poems wouldn’t hurt me as much. I think about that a lot.

Danez Smith: You know he dead.

Rachel McKibbens: Wait, did he really die? 

Danez Smith: He dead. 

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)
 

Danez Smith: Yeah, he dead. He dead for real. (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: Oh I thought you meant after I hit him, he’d be dead. And I’m like, you’re right. 

Danez Smith: Can I tell you some shit that happened—

Franny Choi: This is like, a wild story, actually. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: So Tony Hoagland, Tony Hoagland before he died, made like, a poetry mixtape of poems that he liked. And it was like 14 white niggas. And then me doing “Dinosaurs in the Hood”. (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: Of course. Of course, of course it was.

Danez Smith: Which I find hilarious! (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: And isn’t it the most telling thing? Like it’s—I feel like there were white folks who felt like, “Oh, yeah, I can agree on that poem, all right.”

Danez Smith: I literally feel like he was like, “I gotta put a nigga on here so they don’t think I’m racist.”

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: What’s that one young one? (LAUGHS) Who’s that new one? Danez?

Rachel McKibbens: Amazing. Aren’t there plenty of poems where I’ve read and I’m like, this person has never been slapped in the cafeteria.

Danez Smith: Oh, for sure.

Rachel McKibbens: They’ve never been approached for talking shit, and then just straight slapped.

Danez Smith: Plenty of poems, plenty of tweets, like you have never, like, you’ve never been in danger. (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: Right. Legit, legit and you’re like having to make it up. So I think that, you know, poetry can be a great equalizer in that way. But at the same time, too, like, I think that there is a necessity for you standing up for yourself in the real world. And like, really clocking somebody every once in a while. When we are bad, when we are violent, it’s not just simply the opposite of good. It’s a response to a hunger of some kind. And it’s easy to identify the architects of hunger, like, imperialism, religion, capitalism, colonialism, white supremacist delusion, and all of that shit. And for anyone to designate how we’re allowed to respond to that hunger, I think is just really fucking foul. I don’t believe in it. I think that my writing, I just choose to be as dangerous as I am in real life. Which isn’t to say I’m like some—I’m not this volatile ticking time bomb, where people are like—and I actually stay quiet for a very long time. I survey, just like any poet. I gather the data, the information, and I sit there, and it’s not until it is just going to actually sour my spirit to keep holding it, that’s when I release. So that’s the same can be said with poetry as well as when I finally pop off on a fool. Which, you know, this pandemic has made that, oof, the fuse has been shortened, my friends. But I was talking with my partner Jacob, you know, who’s this like, Appalachian hillbilly grizzly bear of a man who also writes poetry, and we were talking about the poem “Shooter” by Jan Beatty versus Hoagland’s poem “The Change.” And we were talking about what the boundaries of wickedness are. And he said this incredible thing. He said, “When wickedness is disobedience, it’s revolutionary. When wickedness is the indulgence of the powerful, it becomes a tool of oppression.” And I was like, holy shit.

Franny Choi: What a smart man you’ve got.

Rachel McKibbens: He just always—yeah, he just sits there, and he’s very much the surveyor as well. We both are often like the life of the party we can’t wait to leave.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Yeah.

Rachel McKibbens: You know, have you ever been really good at something you hated? I am a very entertaining individual. I can hold a conversation and not want to be there at all. And so, (LAUGHS) sometimes I just let the poetry be itself and do the thing. I’m going off on a tangent right now. But someone sent me a manuscript unsolicited recently and asked for, you know, suggestions. And I’m like, I suggest you never send me—

Danez Smith: Wait, straight up, like, cold send, like, “Would you read my book?”

Rachel McKibbens: What are you talking about? Oh, yes, let me—

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: Every three months. A whole one. And I’m like, “What?”

Franny Choi: That’s wild.

Rachel McKibbens: And you know, within the last like, 18 months, y’all, for real, I haven’t written shit. Poetry has not come to my mind lately. I’ve been trying so hard to have my children be okay. Because within like, quarantine, lockdown, pandemic and everything else, they did not come out of it in a way that I had imagined. And so, it’s really hard for me, as, you know, a mother, to even think about craft or art or any of that shit right now when ultimately, I need my kids to be okay, first and foremost. Because if they aren’t, my work, you’ll never see it again. Like, that’s just the cold truth. And I’ve had to like, be mindful of, okay, is this pandemic Rachel talking? Or is this like an actual person who is considering all of the, you know, weighing all the options and paying close attention to what is needed? It’s been a fucking difficult time. And I’ve had to do a lot of surrender, and a lot of quiet time, which, I think, when you’re writing poetry, and when you put it out into the world, that is definitely like a level of surrender. And the same can be said with parenting in this, you know what I—I am so tired of the term uncertain, but we are, it’s just chaos. Like, what’s happening right now. And so, I have to allow for, for the motherhood thing to step up in a way that I’ll be honest, quite frank, I haven’t had to worry too much about my kids. You know, they’re really smart. They have been surrounded by scholars and poets and writers and artists all of their lives. And for them to struggle, that kills a lot of the artist in me. I just don’t have fucking time for her.

Danez Smith: I always tell folks in my classes, I’m like, “It’s okay if you can’t write right now, your creativity gets sucked into the rent, gets sucked into all these other areas of life.” Right? And so like, yeah, so you’re not surrendering to poems right now, you’re surrendering to motherhood. And honestly, I don’t think you would be the writer you are, if you didn’t surrender to your life every once in a while, you know?

Rachel McKibbens: I agree completely. And I go a long time without writing. Like, I will write a book in 30 days and then not write again for four years. I wrote a chapbook after the passing of my baby niece. I wrote that in like, six hours.

Danez Smith: You wrote Mammoth in six hours?

Rachel McKibbens: Oh, yeah. 

Danez Smith: Holy fuck. 

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah, because the deadline was six hours away. (LAUGHS) So I just sat down and wrote it. I got it out of myself, and then I was just able to keep moving, which isn’t to say that the grieving had stopped. It just had reached a different level of it. And I know that they say there’s like specific stages of grief. But really, grief is an ongoing thing. We just learned how to adjust our lives to this new silhouette of sorrow that’s constantly orbiting our bodies.

Franny Choi: Can I ask another question about surrender?

Rachel McKibbens: Yes! Which is the scariest word for me. Please, believe.

Franny Choi: I mean, totally. I mean, this is the thing is, I think of you necessarily as somebody who—surrender is not the first word that comes to mind, when I think of you. 

Rachel McKibbens: Right?

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Rachel McKibbens: Because it’s synonymous in our brains as like, loss. And that’s not the truth.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Yeah. So how does this like, new relationship with surrender and what you’re finding there, does it come up against the like, the fighter in you? And how? 

Rachel McKibbens: Yes. Oh, my goodness. That’s a perfect question for anyone I think who knows me and understands I have been swinging. But isn’t that also the most exhausting thing to be is like, in a constant state of survival, panic, and like, fight. It has taken 600,000 souls dying. It has taken me having to sit in my household to be very present with my kids in a brand new way, and not be able to help them through their mental illness, through like, all of the internal struggles that come with being young kids, two young trans kids who haven’t really been able to socialize their new selves. So they have been trapped in their former selves. Because really, the authenticity does sort of come to light once you can introduce your new self to your people, right? Like, that’s such an important step in transition is to be able to say like, “This is who I am.” To be able to say, “There’s nothing more I can do. Like, this is where a professional has to come in. This is where I have to just give you time.” Because not only did I have two children who were in the midst of transition, and also right at seventh and eighth grade, like when all of the social norms sort of start kicking in, and when you start, like, your hormones are just, just fragrant as fuck!

Danez Smith: Those are some wild years, those two years. Whew.

Rachel McKibbens: So imagine having to be trapped in that. To have not been able to go outside to see your peers, all of that. Like, it couldn’t have come at a more vulnerable time for both of them. And so, I can’t read right now. I don’t—like, I have ADHD. I cannot focus. I have to listen to audiobooks now. And I’m really upset at how many books of poetry are not in audio form. But we’ll just get on to that later. And so, a friend of mine, Kim, posted, “It’s 2021. And the word of the year for me is surrender.” And I was like, “Ugh!” I recoiled from that. And then I sat with it for like two days, and I understood, you know, it’s really letting go of an expectation, and instead, allowing what the future holds to just reveal itself in due time. And, you know, like all trauma survivors, all we want is control. You know? All we want is to be able to, now as adults, maintain some level of normalcy, which, I mean, what even is that, right? But I have to understand, too, that like, I can’t change much. And I think so many of us have come to this conclusion throughout the pandemic, that really, all we can do is just be better people or not, sleep in or not, work out or not. But like, I just have to allow myself to not try to imagine a thing is going to end up the way I need it to. And instead, I’m going to have to just adapt to whatever it is that comes. And it is, again, really hard, because poetry has allowed me a voice that I had really suppressed for a very long time. Poetry in the beginning, it felt like I was snitching, which is so against the code of like, Chicano culture, you know, specifically gang culture. And it’s been a great journey to discover that I can also be a witness to what I have survived. I was actually most present for it. And that when I allow the imagination to kick in to maybe save myself from experiencing things again when I’m writing them, allowing imagination and maybe take some control is a really exciting thing. And I recommend it for lots of folks, to allow the magic of yourself to exist against brutal instances of both like, you know, I don’t know, violence as well as even the softer things. I’m allowing now for my brain to not be this racing, panicked, you know, whirl of, “Oh gosh, what if this happens, and what if that happens?” At this point, it’s like, if it happens, well, if my machete can’t fix it, (LAUGHS) then we’ll just have to, I don’t know, do something else.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) What an amazing, what an amazing sentence.

Danez Smith: Machete first solutions.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Yeah.

Rachel McKibbens: Literally. But I also, you know, I’ve been around for a while now. And I trust that when it’s time for me to write, I’ll fucking do it. There’s no expiration on my creativity. I know that I can, I can witness something, hold it in my body, and great, it’s even funner to come back around to it when I’ve evolved as a human and I can see it and portray it in a new way that maybe I couldn’t have in that time. And again, like, I’ve just stopped, I didn’t end. Bitch, I’m here still. 

Danez Smith: It’s such a hard place to get to, though. I think, especially as poets who come from slam and spoken word where like, the whole shit is having something to say. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Like, have something to say and then like, have a neat way of getting out of it.

Danez Smith: Right. But I think it’s such a hard way to get to what Rachel’s talking about, which is the comfort in like, I don’t have that much to say right now. You know? It’s such a hard space, when like, your whole poetry brain has been engine towards, every time you come here, we’re sick of the old thing you had to say. So maybe have some new thing that you have to say today. And life is long. It’s like, yeah, those couple of years, I didn’t really have shit to say to y’all. (LAUGHS) Or to myself.

Rachel McKibbens: Or it was just my business! It was just my business!

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: It was my business. I didn’t have nothing to tell you. I was talking to my people for a little bit. (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: That part! And that’s exactly actually what it is. I have three, like, really close confidants that make it to where the poetry is not necessary right now. You know? And if I didn’t have them, yeah, I’d probably be writing. But because I’m able to sort of work it out with them and like, be in community with like, you know, misfits, witches, and bitches who truly have been through it. And I need that, because I didn’t go to college. I never studied writing or poetry or any of that. And so I’m a very self-taught human being. And I still am trying to teach myself how to be and reconnect with women, with the feminine, and not look at them as like, potential victim or potential orphaning being, right? Because the mother wound is long. It never ends. And so, I have to really reconcile with that too, because I’ve always said, I’m a recovering misogynist. And there are days where I’m like, “Mm, no, don’t think that way, bitch, like, you know, better.” You know, we have to constantly be in, like, reeducating ourselves of things. And so, I’m very grateful for all of the people I’ve met through like, when I think about like Lauren Wheeler, Sonya Renee, like, the folks that I’ve been in community with for like, almost two decades now, who have taught me how to shape myself into being a good human. And writer. Like it all comes from, you know, these amazing people who were unwilling to let me give up on myself, and name the end, you know what I mean? Like, I truly—they’re like, “No, no, there’s still more to learn, bitch, your dumb, keep going.” (LAUGHS) And, you know, I have been so beautifully educated within the poetry community. I would not be the mother I am without them. I wouldn’t be the poet I am without them. I wouldn’t be the fighter I am without them. And so, I always want to give them their proper credit as well, too. Because as much as we can harm each other, we can also assist each other into liberation and save each other in ways that we probably never could have imagined. And so, isn’t that great when you let these other people like, broaden your imagination and let them stretch it out, and like, let you be able to fit more into it? That’s what I’m here for.

Franny Choi: You know, this is something that we were, that Danez and I were talking about before. You know, we were talking about you as a community builder, with Pink Door, which is like a life-saving and life-giving space in so many ways. And, you know, you’ve been talking about the community that has been holding you down. And then we’ve also, we were also kind of asking, like, you know, like, anytime somebody says like, “the poetry community,” it’s always like a, hmm?

Rachel McKibbens: Right.

Franny Choi: Like, does that exist? Is that something real? And like, is it useful at all to think of community in that kind of like realm or among that people. Because we think of you as somebody who is building spaces, and also like, dismantling, and like, shaking up spaces that call themselves communities. So.

Rachel McKibbens: Community can itself be a very dangerous, triggering word. But I think that if we—if there’s a kinship in some way, and we wish to honor that, and we wish to do that together and to help others elevate their stories, and help assist each other in the telling of them, that’s important work, but I don’t think that it’s—we can’t rely on “Oh, this is a poet that I rely on you.” Nah, don’t do that. We develop our own little, you know, chosen family units, which is, you know, a thing queers have been doing forever. Or any people who’ve been othered by society do it. But really, I mean, I don’t even think of myself as a builder. I just think of myself as an instigator. And you’re aware, Franny, like, Pink Door isn’t like sitting down like, “Oh, we’re gonna do a bunch of poetry and writing!” No, it’s actually about recess. It’s actually about fun. It’s about people coming together that have one thing in common, if nothing else, as well as, you know, I have now exclusively, non-men writers of color, Black writers to come together and find joy and find themselves. To learn how to be still surrounded by crickets chirping and all kinds of wild foxes and a babbling brook. And allowing yourself that kind of comfort and stillness that is never easy to acquire, and then get to the writing. The writing is so secondary to just sort of eliminating the kinships that are going to help you survive. And I’ve loved to see what you take back to your own atmosphere. Community is so weird to say now, because it can be—community harms. But again, what is a community, but it’s a group of people coming together for some reason. As human beings, there’s no such thing as a safe space, of course. That’s why I believe in brave spaces. And all of these levels of kinship and, you know, these beautiful friendships, I wish I’d had them when I was small, when I was younger. I’d have a lot less credit card debt and baby daddies. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Or maybe higher limits, and an extra baby daddy or two.

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHING) I’d have better baby daddies. I’d have some baby mamas too, that’s for sure. I’m just really grateful, though, that folks have trusted me to have this space. And you know, as well, I’m running around frantic, I’m doing all kinds of things, but I’m not like, this orchestrator. It’s up to them to come together and like, sort of build for themselves the kind of atmosphere that gets them free enough to be able to finally write in a way that they couldn’t if they were coming straight out of their nine-to-five cubicle, you know? The importance of recess is huge. And it’s just as important to my kids who, on the East Coast, since moving here, I couldn’t believe how much recess is taken away. Not just because of weather, but, the kids are acting up, you don’t get recess. The kids are acting up so they should have recess is what it is! Like, how folks don’t get that is ridiculous to me, but adults don’t have enough recess as well. Like the other day, I was talking, you know, again, with Jacob and I was like, “I just can’t believe that I had a job where I was told when I could eat.” Just that alone, I’m like, oh my gosh. It just is wild. And I have so much respect for the folks who like, can like, go do that awful grind office job thing, because it’s what pays their bills, and then they go create. Like, I couldn’t do that. I just don’t have a good brain enough for that. I just hope that at the end of all of this mayhem, we can find for ourselves spaces like where we could just be quiet for a while, and learn to just be tender with ourselves and each other, in new and vibrant ways. Everything we’ve been doing has been wrong. (LAUGHS) With the exception of, you know, a few things. I think the creativity will come in in new ways. It will show itself. I’m writing plays again, which—I started writing plays. And now I’ve been writing three consecutive plays. Or I’m writing three plays at once. And it’s fun. I love it.

Danez Smith: Briefly though, are they related?

Rachel McKibbens: No, not at all.

Franny Choi: You’re just writing a festival of plays.

Rachel McKibbens: I am. I’m in the Rochester Fringe Festival this year, September 18 and 25.

Danez Smith: Oh shit!

Rachel McKibbens: And it has drag, and it has a sideshow act, and it has an old man playing me in the future. It is gonna be fun.

Danez Smith: It has everything. (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah, it really does! Because really, I mean, you can’t be a person that talks about your mental illness in a restrictive format. Like, that’s impossible. It’s gotta have—it’s just gotta have everything, and maybe not make sense in a few areas. I don’t believe that we have to be accessible to everyone. I don’t believe in art having to do that. I think that it’s actually very fucking important to be exclusive sometimes. And to have only five homies in the room understand what the fuck you’re saying.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Rachel McKibbens: And that’s a whole other conversation.

Danez Smith: Well, that was great.

Rachel McKibbens: I’m sorry there was like, no theme in this talk!

Danez Smith: No, there was!

Franny Choi: There was. I’ve been writing stuff down.

Rachel McKibbens: Is there? Oh, my heavens. What is it? Tell me now.

Danez Smith: Nigga, you make more sense than you think. Don’t worry.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Totally. 

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) I appreciate you, D.

Danez Smith: And you tangent well. Trust me, because we’ve had some people that tangent bad on this show.

Franny Choi: Ooo, yeah.

Danez Smith: So, you tangent well. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (SINGS) You tangent well.

Rachel McKibbens: Just sign language the names of those people to me please. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: I kid, I kid, I kid. No more that, y’all. We’re done.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Danez Smith: All right, motherfuckers, let’s play some games.

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: That was aggressive. Let’s play some games, everybody!

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) C’mon, shit eaters!

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: C’mon, cocksuckers!

(CROSSTALK)

Rachel McKibbens: I can’t stand you.

Danez Smith: Although I love the sound, chuckers, it’s just so good. It has a nice sound to it. Chuckers. Yeah, white people, y’all were really on that, calling us spear chuckers. That shit’s funny. (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: Oh my goodness, get me out of here.

Danez Smith: If we can’t escape racism, can we at least appreciate when it’s funny? (LAUGHS)
 

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Rachel McKibbens: Yes.

Franny Choi: What else are you supposed to do?

Danez Smith: Exactly. So that was a weird transition for this game. We’re gonna play Fast Punch. A game where you’re gonna tell us the best or the worst of those categories. Rachel McKibbens, would you like to be a pessimist or optimist today?

Rachel McKibbens: Optimist.

Franny Choi: Oo, love it.

Danez Smith: We love it.

Rachel McKibbens: Unexpected, I know. I did that on purpose.

Franny Choi: Great.

Danez Smith: I’ll get us started. Best sandwich.

(TIMER TICKS)

Rachel McKibbens: BLT.

Franny Choi: Best object in The Spirit Room.

Rachel McKibbens: Pelvis.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHING) The pelvis. I was like, Elvis? No, pelvis, pelvis.

Rachel McKibbens: A pelvis. An actual pelvis.

Danez Smith: Best dead woman.

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) Uh … Emma Goldman, which is not true, but.

Franny Choi: Great.

Rachel McKibbens: Harriet Tubman is actually the best.

Danez Smith: Yeah. Harriet’s the best of them.

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah, let’s just be real. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Best movie villain.

Rachel McKibbens: Oh, shit. Jack Torrance.

Danez Smith: What is that from?

Rachel McKibbens: From The Shining.

Franny Choi: Oh, from The Shining. 

Rachel McKibbens: The Shining, you young fucks!

Danez Smith: I’ve never seen it. There, I said it.

Franny Choi: I haven’t either.

Rachel McKibbens: What!

Danez Smith: You neither, Franny?

Franny Choi: Yeah, no.

Rachel McKibbens: He’s a deranged writer! He’s inhabited by a ghost! What is wrong with y’all?

Danez Smith: Is that “Here’s Johnny”?

Rachel McKibbens: Yes!

Danez Smith: I understand that reference. Thanks to—

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) Because someone nutted in you and said that, let’s be honest!

Danez Smith: No, because it was a joke from—actually, yeah, probably. Now, actually, next time I nut in someone, I’m gonna say that.

Franny Choi: That’s a horrifying thing to have said to you while that’s happening.

Rachel McKibbens and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: I feel traumatized just thinking about it.

Rachel McKibbens: Can you imagine? I would scramble off into the snow so fast. 

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: Oh dear.

Danez Smith: Best title of a poem that you wrote.

Rachel McKibbens: “Finally the Author Gets Personal.” Because it’s at the end of a very personal book. (LAUGHS) 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHING) I remember, I was like, bitch!

Rachel McKibbens: It was such a joke. I thought everyone would laugh and no one did.

Danez Smith: I did!

Franny Choi: I laughed!

(ALL LAUGH)

Danez Smith: I was like, “Oh, now?”

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah, now they’re personal.

Franny Choi: Best candle smell.

Rachel McKibbens: Sandalwood.

Danez Smith: Best title of a poem written by your husband.

Rachel McKibbens: Oh, I don’t know how to say the word! It’s … fuck. Well, it’s a word—it’s a crazy poem about his sister. “Pika.” That’s it.

Franny Choi: Best cocktail.

Rachel McKibbens: Oh, fuckers. You know what, an old fashioned.

Danez Smith: Alright, last one for me. Best cake.

Rachel McKibbens: Cake row cake. Bitch, if you don’t remember that.

Danez Smith: You mean a boxed Entenmann’s cake?

Rachel McKibbens: Yes! Yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

Danez Smith: Yes it is, you’re right! Shout-out to the cake row.

Rachel McKibbens: Cake row. Cake row.

Danez Smith: One of the best nights at the National Poetry Slam.

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah. The best cake is snuck in cake to a poetry slam.

Danez Smith: Yeah, Franny, this is NPS like, two thousand like thirteen. It was one of the Boston ones.

Rachel McKibbens: I don’t know.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah.

Danez Smith: And me and Rachel—

Rachel McKibbens: I just pull an Entenmann’s cake out of my purse and we just started eating with no utensils.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I was high and I was like nigga I’m hungry! 

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) And during people’s poems were like “Cake row!”

Danez Smith: It was our, like, impromptu team. (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: “Cake row!”, for no good reason. 

Danez Smith: God that was some delicious cake.

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Okay, my last one is just, best thing that you miss about Pink Door.

Rachel McKibbens: The moonlit cackling over a table of dominoes.

(TIMER DINGS)

Rachel McKibbens: Our 10th anniversary is this year, but it’s gonna have to be next year. But we have a secret person coming. But it rhymes with Satricia Pith and—(LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHING) Nothing rhymes with Patricia. But yeah, it’s like my dream—

Franny Choi: I like that you just switched the letters in her name. Smatricia Pith.

Rachel McKibbens: Satricia Pith.

Franny Choi and Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Well, I’m coming, I have a pink door too, mine’s just in the back, so.

Rachel McKibbens: You can! You’re dumb, Pink Door is only because my door of my actual house is pink. It has nothing to do with genitalia.

Danez Smith: Sounds like pussy to me.

(ALL LAUGH)

Danez Smith: (SINGS) Sounds like pussy to me.

Franny Choi: You’re not wrong, you’re not wrong.

(SOUND EFFECT)

Rachel McKibbens: All right, who’s fighting?

Franny Choi: Okay, yes, yes. Now, we are going to play This vs. That, where we make two things fight, and you tell us which one will win in a fight. Sometimes we do like, concepts and ideas, but for you we wanted to actually put people in a fight. Taylor Mali with a knife versus Tony Hoagland with a bat.

(BELL RINGS)

Rachel McKibbens: Oh, shit. Here’s why I know that the answer is Taylor Mali with a knife. He’s still living, and he probably like, will scamper up a wall like some sort of exorcist, fucking phantom.

Danez Smith: (INAUDIBLE)

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah, exactly. He just seems like there’s some pent up—you know that bitch levitates. You know. There’s just too many white folks holding him up. So (LAUGHS) he’s just—it’s funny because, I get along with Taylor, actually. He knows that he like, pisses me off, but like, I mean, come on. His family like invented the felt that goes on a pool table. You know it was originally skin. You know it was.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: It’s fine to make fun of Taylor Mali, because he’s rich, and he will be eating for the rest of his life, because one time he wrote a poem that made teachers happy. And another time he wrote a poem that made white men feel happy about hating women. (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) Exactly! Exactly! What are you talking about? Yeah. He also took my baby’s sterling silver rattle that—so he gave my child this battered antique Tiffany’s silver rattle. And he he goes, “Hey, do you still have that rattle?” And I’m like, “Bitch, of course I do. It’s from Tiffany. Like, it’s the only thing I’ll ever own from Tiffany.” And it was still in my child’s room. And he needed it for a photo shoot. And he never sent it back.

Franny Choi: Whoaaa.

Danez Smith: That’s sheisty, Taylor Mali. And also, if you have things from Tiffany’s for me, then I will say three nice things about you on the next episode of VS.

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: How did we turn this into this? Why are we like this?

Franny Choi: I love that you say this, and this is like, maybe our last episode of VS. Oh, wait, cuz we have one more. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: We have one. He’s not even gonna hear it before we record it. I mean, literally, but Taylor Mali regardless, the next time—

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: If you give me things from Tiffany’s, I’ll say nice things about you. I’ll wait until Vogue is interviewing me for some reason. And be like, “You know what we really should talk about? That nigga Taylor Mali.”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) He’s got enough real estate! We need to kick him out of this convo.

Danez Smith: Okay, let’s do the last one now. This is our last game for you. It’s called This vs. Something Else, where you get to choose between living here or living in this alternate reality that we just discovered. So, would you rather live in this shithole, or a world where not every time, but sometimes, and randomly, the violence in your poems comes true?

(SOUND EFFECT)

Rachel McKibbens: (GASPS) There! What, are you kidding me? Do you know how much of that is like, actual attempts at spell casting, conjuring, and manifesting? Like, are you kidding me? Heck yeah.

Franny Choi: Really?

Rachel McKibbens: Randomly is scary. I trust violence more than stillness, which sucks. But that’s just where I am in the world. And I’m trying to train myself to trust stillness, but I’m just not there yet. So, as who I am right now, I choose that shit. It’s honest.

Franny Choi: Wait, but what about poems that you’re telling, where you’re telling about things that already have happened? Like, is it the violence of the poems about like, events in the past then come back? How does that work?

Rachel McKibbens: Well, I would say that I now would know how to better like, tame that shit. You know? That’s shit I’ve already survived. I’m just a weirdo like that. Sorry.

Danez Smith: But I was gonna say earlier, even like your thoughts about like, poems stopping instead of ending, that’s a very witchy concept, right? It’s like, in terms of the spell, right? You finish the spell, and shit happens, you know?

Rachel McKibbens: Exactly. Like it kind of, sort of becomes this built up narrative that you are now destined to fulfill or, end or, whatever. Like, it’s up to you to come up with how that continues or discontinues. So, yeah, I mean, I’m, that’s just how my brain likes to be. I’m a lunatic, and I embrace it and lean into it, and I eat cake.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Sometimes Entenmann’s cake.

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I’m gonna go out and get me a goddamn Entenmann’s cake today. Ain’t nothing like some cheap cake with a glass of milk. Motherfucker, ooo!

Rachel McKibbens: Literally.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Rachel McKibbens: I put milk on the ice because I am—

Danez Smith: I put milk on ice too, and my boo calls me weird.

Rachel McKibbens: You do not! What are you talking about? I will drink iced milk on a hot summer day that way bitches drink Budweiser. 

Danez Smith: I am a milk drinker. Okay, like not—I enjoy milk as a beverage. I think milk tastes good with—

Rachel McKibbens: What is wrong with us?

Danez Smith: I definitely ice it, and I will drink milk with cake or pasta or pizza. Those are my three favorite foods to have—

Rachel McKibbens: I drink milk with spaghetti like you would not believe. This is funny!

Franny Choi: Wow.

Rachel McKibbens: What? (LAUGHING) Why are we just learning this about each other? 

Danez Smith: I don’t know what it is, but milk and pasta sauce, ooo! It’s so good.

Rachel McKibbens: It’s this is funky. I love this.

Danez Smith: Franny, get on it. Yes. I’m glad I found—

Rachel McKibbens: Because people think I’m disgusting. They think I’m a monster.

Franny Choi: If I had a glass of milk with a slice of pizza, I would be—I would ruin the house. I would ruin the environment.

Rachel McKibbens: What!

Danez Smith: Oh!

Rachel McKibbens: Well, yeah, there’s that, there’s that. Sure. But like, for those of us who can tolerate it, it’s a glorious thing. I love it.

Danez Smith: I’m not saying I can tolerate it. 

Franny Choi: Right. I was gonna say, I don’t think—I’ve been—

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) Your boo pays for it later?

Danez Smith: Yeah. You know? You just have to fart so much in front of your boo that they think it’s funny.

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS) And we’re ending on farts. It’s perfect. It’s a great bookend. I love you both so much. I’m so grateful for this. Thank you.

Danez Smith: Me too.

Franny Choi: Thank you so much, Rachel. This is—I mean, you mean so much to us. When we were baby poets, when we were like now starting to become aging poets.

Danez Smith: I have gray hairs in the front.

Rachel McKibbens: Ah! Well, thank you for having me. You both are just tremendously generous listeners as well as writers, and I hope to drink milk with half of you soon.

Danez Smith: I can’t wait for it. I mean, like, seriously, like Franny was saying, I just love you. And like, I don’t know, I can’t think of a better person to like, help us cap off these five years.

Rachel McKibbens: Yeah! What a tremendous five years. So yeah, I’m here to be all the trouble you need to bring it to that kind of ending. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Beautiful.

Franny Choi: Right. I love that. We were like, “Okay, and let’s close out with some wicked chaos.” 

Rachel McKibbens: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Wicked good chaos.

Danez Smith: Let’s blow this shit up! Rachel, would you read us one more poem?

Rachel McKibbens: Of course. I’m going to actually read from Mammoth, because I don’t always. So this is, yeah, this is the close to a book that is just about my 23-month-old niece, Ingrid.

(READS POEM) – poem not available

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Franny Choi: Rachel McKibbens, what a menace. (LAUGHS) What an incredible, beautiful, menace.

Danez Smith: Wow, a menace for the people.

Franny Choi: A menace for the people. A menace for the people, Jesus, that’s really, really good. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I really bow to Rachel’s embrace of like, wickedness and like, feralness as part of the human experience. Especially that feral shit, right? I think it takes a lot to be like, so comfortable in your feral bitch self, right?

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: Do you ever have a time, Franny, where you feel like your most feral self? You’re like, oh, right, I am an animal? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah. I mean, this is something that I actually kind of relate to literally watching Rachel as a mother and as like, a mother of community spaces, but like, it’s truly if any of my friends or loved ones are threatened like at all, I just watch my brain evaporate and it’s just all like, lizard brain. And yet I can’t fight. So like, I don’t know where all the energy is going to go to someday. It’s just going to go to me getting hurt, but like, as small as like, if somebody leaves the ‘h’ off of Fati’s name in an email, I just feel like my blood start to—

Danez Smith: Oooo! (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: You know? Like I just like, turn green. Like, the other day, a man on the street bumped into Cameron as he walked by, and I was like, I’m about to go to jail right now. I’m going to murder this man. And Cameron had to just like, talk me down. So, yeah. That and losing at games meant for children. That’s the other time when I feel like my brain leave my body and I just become an animal.

Danez Smith: I have seen you lose a game. And it’s just like, Franny’s plotting revenge right now, I’m gonna go out to the corner store. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh my god! I was telling somebody recently that like, there were a few times soon after I moved here with Cameron that we played Bananagrams. And afterward, I had to literally like, go out onto the fire escape and like, smoke a cigarette.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Because I was so upset. Like, so angry and like crying. I had to like, do breathing exercises and presencing exercises to calm myself down and like, pump nicotine into my body because I was like, so, so activated. So those are the two things. Defending the honor of my friends and losing at Bananagrams. 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Those are my most animal self.

Danez Smith: I love it, that makes sense for you. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) What about you? When do you get feral?

Danez Smith: I think mine are both in like, homosexual, like queer situations. One very similar to you, like when I’m out with friends and stuff like that, I’m both like, barking and biting at people who are near my friends and being like, “What the fuck do you want? You don’t need to flirt with him. He’s too drunk. You don’t need to talk to her. She doesn’t want to talk to you.” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: And all this other type of shit, and I’m like ready to fight. But also, I’m approaching—have you ever seen like a dog or an animal of some sort of just like, bite the neck of their young child to like, pull them somewhere? I’m also that with my friends. You know? I’m also like, biting at them being like, “What the fuck are you doing over there, you drunk bitch. Come over here. Sit down. Drink that fucking water.” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And I’m just mad that I have to mother at that point.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: But I’m also like, “I love you. Do you want chicken wings? I’m gonna get you some chicken fingers, you bitch.” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)
 

Danez Smith: “Don’t talk to any of these men.”

Franny Choi: Ugh, definitely, as a general rule, don’t talk to any of these men.

Danez Smith: Yeah, exactly. But then also like, then I become feral when I’m also like, in a bath house or something like that. And surely, what I’m describing is pre-2020. But you know, when it’s just like a space to just be a little like, sex rodent, you know? And it’s just like, fuck this, lick this, suck that, this, that, have all the fun. And I’m just like, “Me want meat and me am meat” and you know.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Me want meat and me am meat.

Danez Smith: Me am meat.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)
 

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Me cannibal? Me existential crisis. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Who am me?

Danez Smith: Who am meat?

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHING) So stupid.

Danez Smith: But it’s true. Like, you know, I just like, hav no brain. I’m just like, if I try to think a thought it’s too hard. It’s just like, just give me some hole, girl.

Franny Choi: Yeah. I mean, that’s why—like, why go to the bathhouse if not to just like, be feral and—

Danez Smith: Right. And like, is it really unabashed sex if one of you isn’t like growling or like oinking without intention?

Franny Choi: Ooo. Oinking? God, have you oinked? Have you done that?

Danez Smith: (OINKS)

Franny Choi: Have you done that?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Ooo. Wow.

Danez Smith: Yeah, I think it’s like a snarl and like, depending on how congested I am, it can turn into an oink.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: I love that. Is it great sex or is it allergies? (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Maybe it’s great sex, maybe it’s allergies.

Franny Choi: Exactly. Oh, man. Well, I think that is a great note on which to say that, remarkably, this is our last interview episode of VS for me and Danez, which is like, very wild to say after these five fucking years of doing this show. And yeah, so I don’t know. We’ll have one more episode, which will feature a small but special surprise. And in that episode, we’ll also be going back and looking at some of our favorite moments from VS and playing some games. And so we hope that you will tune in for that. But yeah, this is the last interview with a poet and it’s been like, quite a ride. So thank you all for being with us on it.

Danez Smith: Yeah, we never thought five years ago that we would get to have as many and as splendid of the conversations that we’ve got to have with, you know, probably, what over 100 poets?

Franny Choi: I think about 100.

Danez Smith: About 100 poets.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: And it’s truly just the tip of the iceberg. We hope that you have enjoyed these last five years with us. And we hope that you will continue to support the show as we hand it off into the capable hands of the new hosts. It will definitely be their own thing, but they will be continuing on in our spirit. And so we hope you all, along with us will cheer them along. And remember, you know, like, they have to find their sea legs, too. We didn’t really start being good podcast hosts until like, two, three years in, so. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I would say like, three episodes ago. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Until this episode, maybe. (LAUGHS) Who actually knows if we were ever good hosts. But we hope that you all will encourage them, support them, pray for them as they continue this VS dream, because truly, like I said, we have only just touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to contemporary poetics. And we look forward to another five and another five and another five years of folks being able to bring you conversations sitting down at the table with some of your favorite poets and bringing y’all a good conversation that hopefully you feel a little bit more at home in. From the bottom of my heart, thank y’all for being here with us.

Franny Choi: Yeah, thank you all. Truly, truly, thank you. I can’t wait to see how this grows, you know?

Danez Smith: I can’t wait to not have to host it. Oh my god, I just get to listen! What!

Franny Choi: I know. We get to listen, and it’s gonna be really cool.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: But yeah, so, why don’t we thank some people and get on out of here. So I recently found out that a student of mine had passed away from last semester. So I’m just going to take this time to just dedicate this episode to Alden Powers. Thank you, Alden. And thank you to all of my students in that class for making a really beautiful space within a hard time. And that I hope that you all hold each other and continue writing and remembering. So yeah, I just personally dedicate this episode to the memory of Alden.

Danez Smith: Yeah, I don’t think I need to say anything beyond that. I’ll just say, prayers to Alden’s friends and family in your time of mourning and healing. You know, to the spirit of Alden, wherever you may be, shine on, we hope you are at peace. And just, a special prayer, not even a thank-you going out there to all the students who are returning either back into the digital classroom, or who are in a, you know, maybe not so secure in-person situation. To all the teachers and educators and staff out there who are in these schools, we pray for you. We hope that you are doing well both physically and spiritually. My heart goes out to the world, and to Alden’s family as well.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Thanks for that, Nezzy. Okay, well, we also want to thank, as usual, our producer, Daniel Kisslinger, who has been like, the champ of champs over these last five years, and the best collaborator in the world. We want to thank Ydalmi Noriega and Itzel Blancas at the Poetry Foundation, always and forever. Thank you to Postloudness. Thank you to all of you for continuing to listen to us here in our very final season of VS with Franny and Danez.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Danez Smith: Make sure you like, rate, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure you follow us on Twitter @VSthe podcast. That’d be a great place if you want to stay up to date on what’s happening with the new hosts of VS, and when the show will be coming back in the New Year. Or, you know, just subscribe and that thing’ll just slide on in—

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: On into your queue whenever it gets here. But we seriously thank y’all so much for listening to the podcast. And run out and buy all of Rachel McKibbens’s books, you will be better for them. And thank y’all. Be well.

Franny Choi: Be well. I have the last word. Goodbye.

Danez Smith: Word.

Franny Choi: And I also say word.

Danez Smith: That was Franny.

Franny Choi: Okay, but now it’s me, at the end. 

Danez Smith: It’s over. Alright. Danez. Smith. It’s me, bye. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Franny Choi, bye. Little comedy sketch for the people.

Danez Smith: Lil’ sketcharoo.