It Wasn’t Really a Question | A Conversation between Mother and Daughter
Interviews
By Carla Lee Allen
I knew my daughter was gonna like and love words after winning first place in her first-grade oratorical contest. If my memory serves me right, she memorized a Langston Hughes poem, which I wrote out on manila paper in big, bold, black letters to help her see the words better. This was at Elisha M. Peace—the elementary down the street from her great grandmother’s house—an elementary that generations of Kendra’s family have also attended, even though I did not.
When my Trueblood—a nickname I gave her as a teen because not only did we watch the HBO show together, but it symbolizes our blood bond and what she truly means to me—asked me to interview her, I was honored. But after reading The Collection Plate, I admit I still don’t understand some poems—especially if they don’t rhyme—and I often have to reread lines a thousand times, so I hope I don’t overthink it or overstep my role with my quick wit and up-front questioning. Here goes “prose” or “pros and cons” of what I think, and would like to know, about The Collection Plate.
Carla Lee Allen: There’s a song by Hall & Oates that came out way before your time called “Maneater.” The lyrics made me think of your poem “Chihuahuas.” I initially thought, Why wouldn’t you name a poem after your dog Zero (whom readers may not know you recently put down after fifteen or so years with you). I’m not tryna bum you out, but you seem to strategically and emphatically make decisions—sometimes out the blue—so after rereading, I thought you were speaking on small-minded men who believe they are so Big in everything, knowing their bite is smaller than their bark and how they often hide behind the truth that they’re not that complicated or interesting and at the same time wanting never-ending leniency. Am I right in this assumption about this particular poem?
Kendra Allen: First of all, I know that song. Second of all, I’m dead at you going IN like this hahahaha!!!! You betta run that sentence on!!
But the man here is just about mankind in general. I think we all got power struggles and other various dynamics that prevent us from figuring out who we are because we too busy thinking of what we lack. The lil man complex. It’s in us all. We all got chips on our shoulders. Resentment that won’t die. Words that have been said to us that changed our view of ourselves. All of that. We all just small and soft trying so hard to be big and tough and it’s exhausting. So that’s all I was tryna say, although I do like what you said, as well.
CLA: Your poem “My sex wet” is an eye-opening title that kind of sounds like a Trey Songz song. Seeing as how I had you a little over the age you are now, and you’ve mentioned that children are not in your plans, when you said you were “forced into [your] life” by way of forceps and “constantly trying to omit [yourself] back into the body” because you weren’t “sure [you] wanted to be here”—is this an emotional response or your true feelings? I think of wetness as a definite action of touch, but what does it mean to you?
KA: Yea I kinda agree that wetness is an action of touch but I think that touch don’t always have to be physical—or, external. It can, and most times does, come from an internal place. All the poems that are seemingly about sex in the collection, ain’t about sex at all. All of them are about touch and consent. Every single sexual reference is about these two things more than it’s about the act of sex. All the things I wrote in that poem are emotional responses to my true feelings. Sometimes I feel like I desire disappearing more than anything in the world, even more than being able to write. Sometimes I wanna start from scratch and scrape my memory and go back in and come back out cleaner, clearer; and wetness is just the symbol of something beginning or ending.
CLA: My father was not very present in my life though he lived thirty minutes down the street, my mother’s father was not present in hers, and my grandmother’s father was in her life for a while but treated her like a maid. I say this to say, my father was wrong for my mother, and your father was wrong for me, and possibly my grandmother’s husbands were wrong for her, but I truly believe had we not chosen them, none of us would not be here today. But Our Heavenly Father is the right choice—that’s why I raised you to know Him in case any outside forces disappointed you. You have five “Our Father’s house” poems in the book and reference “Our Father” even more than this—so my question is, do you think any of us really know our fathers? Do you find it hard to trust father figures or men, period? And do you trust God the real father in your life?
KA: You said “my question,” then asked fifty eleven of em at once but Ima play along, Carla. I guess the short answer to all three questions is yes. I feel like a lot of us know our fathers. And well. Which really be where the conflict comes in. But I do feel moved and led by “Our Father.” Of course. I be telling you all the time how the older I get, the more aware I am of when I’m being spoken to, but all you hear is I ain’t going to church (which I’m not). I am working on the patience part though, all the waiting. And as far as trusting men, I think it’ll be foolish for any of us to put blind trust into them after knowing and witnessing and experiencing so much. Kinda feels like insanity to do so honestly.
CLA: After reading “Birth of black bishop,” I thought about how people stand for queens and presidents and other guests of honor as a manmade rule meant to place people on a pedestal of superiority; so here’s my question: is it the superiority that bothers you or is it because it’s usually a man whom we stand for?
KA: Boffum. Mostly because the standing is never about standing. The standing be about bowing, due to factors like social and monetary status—which always throws me off cause I was raised to treat everybody the same—with respect and kindness of course, but not with no inclination that what someone does or what someone obtains makes them special. It’s just what you do, a title you’ve been given, whatever. It’s all perception. But it’s all about power and privilege as well. I think growing up in the church and seeing the way we were sort of forced into seeing men as greater than based on the bare minimum of being a man, having to rise on their entrance and wait to be seated by their hands, was really wild and leaned too closely into the false idol narratives they were preaching to us about not falling victim to; so I’d never take it seriously. I honestly cannot believe we was doing that. Everyone around me would act like we were in the actual presence of God; meanwhile, I’m like this just a nigga in a pulpit, what is going on, he not even that good at his job. So yea, boffum bothers me equally.
CLA: In your interview with The Paris Review, you said you “need stress” to pump out the work. I’ve heard stress in short bursts can be positive thing, especially in trying to meet a deadline. So is this why you tend to listen to music, drink lots of coffee and energy drinks, and eat lots of sweets— because you’re having these episodes of acute stress? And if so, do you think this will always be your routine for finishing up projects and meeting deadlines?
KA: I really hope not, but that’s more on me and my inability to formulate a routine that don’t feel like confinement. I let procrastination get the best of me every single time and the only reason I do all this other stuff is to distract myself. None of these things actually helps me to write more than they give me a reason to get up and not write. I don’t even like coffee, but now I need to stay awake in order to finish what I gotta finish. And honestly, I can’t really write to music unless I’ve been writing for hours before I start to listen. If I turn on music as I “begin,” I ain’t finna do nothing but dance around and look up lyrics. And I stress-eat in general, so that’s prolly the only consistent thing: going through phases where all I wanna eat is sweet stuff—which you saw me go to Dairy Queen almost every doggone day for no reason. And then I have weeks where I only wanna eat salty things. But again, all of this does nothing for the writing. I just like punishing myself and need to figure out where that stems from. I mean—I definitely know where—but that’s another answer for another day.
CLA: How is a person supposed to read “Let’s leave” with all these intertwined/intersected words? You’re speaking to a dying what? World/person/thing/thought/being? And is your body what you’re referring to when you use words like “lifeless,” “dry,” “immovable,” and “scraped”?
KA: I’m always wondering what my body will feel like lifeless, but only because—not to sound overly dramatic—I think I done got close a couple times to feeling it. I’ve had many moments where I don’t feel nothing, just kinda weightless and essentially not there—not present. Unable to be present. And it’s a feeling hard to explain, let alone explain it to family and friends who see you as happy and smiling and whatever else y’all be saying whenever I bring up disconnect; but really “Let’s leave” is about acceptance. Most of these poems are about acceptance, about releasing control, because a lot of those feelings probably came from me holding on too tightly to what I wanted instead of what is.
CLA: I wasn’t gonna touch on “If I’m not my mother” mostly because it’s confusing and complicated, but also because it’s difficult to digest. The title itself would have you believing it’s about me—but in actuality it’s the opposite. I think it means a couple of things: although we have our parents’ DNA, you hallucinate you’re someone else, you don’t forgive easily, and romantic love ain’t sustainable. Can you explain it fully?
KA: All “If I’m not my mother” is tryna convey is if I’m not you, that means I’m me—which means I most times have to imagine I’m not a person who’s apprehensive about touch; therefore, I have to hallucinate the human connections I deprive myself of. Whereas if I am you, touch as a metaphor, and a reality, will exist relatively easier, seeing as how I’ve always seen you as this inviting, loving, free being who doesn’t withhold affection. I think we both have people who feel super close to us, but I think the difference is—you feel close to them in return, and I just feel close to you, no matter how close someone else feels to me. But I’ve gotten way better at expressing that side of myself. I don’t know where the feeling came from, but I woke up one morning like damn not only am I too great to deprive myself of love (on all levels) but like girl, you ain’t even living. You ain’t even hugging.
As far as forgiveness, that ain’t no problem. I’m not a grudge holder, but I also really need to feel a sense of closure. That’s where I be getting messed up—lack of clarity; and when I don’t have it, it’s hard for me to let stuff go for good because I obsess over where communication might’ve gone wrong, when memory became convoluted, and other things like that. I don’t know how you came to these conclusions from this lil poem, but I think anything is sustainable if you wanna sustain it. It’s not hard to create a cycle, a routine, a comfortability that kinda feels like a safety net. But I also think sustaining things for the sake of saying it lasted ain’t it. That’s with anything, not just romantic love. Because we grow and outgrow things every single day, and if anything is gonna withstand, I think you gotta know when to let transparency overshadow honesty because they ain’t the same thing. And by you I mean me. You can tell yaself half-truths all day, but if you scared to be seethrough, all that sustaining gone start to feel real close to being stuck.
CLA: You speak on moving around a lot in this book. Do you feel boxed in, or just can’t see yourself settling in one spot? Could you see yourself living and writing in the busy, bustling city of New York with all the noise and night life, or are you strictly a south side type of girl? Meaning, where will your next book be penned? And do you already know what you will be writing about?
KA: I’m definitely a wanderer by nature. I love exploring. I love being alone. I love leaving, being in cars, being on backroads. I don’t know where it comes from but you’ve seen it happen where I get up and go drive for hours, and not even to a specific place. I’ll drive around in a circle. Or like how I woke up one day and said I’m driving to San Antonio and came back and said, “I’m moving to San Antonio.” But I always been a lil bit impulsive though. I don’t know. It prolly got a lot to do with how much me and you moved growing up. We moved almost every single year so I got used to place being a temporary thing. I never felt like I was at home more than it was about coming back to you. But with that, I also deeply crave stability. I want stability just as much as I want the ability to leave, and I think I move around so much because I’m searching for a place that works with me on that level.
I truly think I’m the type of person who can live anywhere and be ok until I’m ready to live somewhere else. As far as New York, I’ve never even been so I won’t count it out, but I’m terrified of rats, so I might have to. I think about Chicago a lot, but I think it’s more about the food at this point. It’s so many cities I wanna experience in full, like New Orleans, Columbus, Phoenix, or even somewhere abroad for a bit. But I do love the South and will probably end up off the grid somewhere far out in the country, laying on a trampoline at night looking at the stars. Somewhere you can hear the bugs. I don’t really envision a lot of noise, lights, or tourism. Like I said, I really just wanna sit down safely somewhere, maybe get another dog, make what I want, and laugh. Dassit. I can write anywhere. And yes I already know what I wanna write about next. You know I be having ideas for days.
CLA: Speaking of New York, I know you love the show Sex in the City and “Nobody told her about the end of love” was like WOAH. It’s eye opening/deep/strong/real/mature. Does this describe you also? Because I’m very proud of the woman you have become, the things you have learned and are still learning, the way you light up when you are expressing something that is special to you, the passion in your eyes and the laughter on your lips, the honesty in which you relay your feelings on the page, the way you stick to your choices, your gut feelings, and your desire to be heard.
KA: Thank you, Mama. That was really nice. I think I’m perceived as deep/strong/real/mature more than I actually am those things. Growing up, I always felt I had to be these words and it just kinda stuck, I guess. I always been in grown folks’ business and always felt responsible for everything and in turn started to be perceived as older than I actually was. Those descriptions have sometimes felt more like a performance of who I have to be in order to survive versus who I wanna be. I wouldn’t say this poem describes me, but it does describe my fear. I never wanna be so tied up in something/someone outside of myself that I lean on it/them to do the things I need to do in order to heal and better myself. That would feel like a failure to me. So this poem kinda just became my warning that I need to do my own work and fix my own shit if I ever wanna become the person I wanna be, accomplish the things I wanna do, and love the way I know I can.
CLA: Do you think your next book, Fruit Punch, will expose your families’ secrets or reveal their truths? Also, do you anticipate anyone else will stop communicating with you like what happened with your first book two years ago and do you really care?
KA: I don’t ever write in an attempt to “expose” anything or anyone. That’s not something I ever strive to do. I respect other people’s privacy so with Fruit Punch—and with everything really—I’ve made it a point to only write about moments that include me. If I’m not present in the things I’m writing about, I won’t write it. I mean, I’ll write it, but it won’t make the final edit. I don’t know if Fruit Punch will change family dynamics, but I hope it don’t change our relationship. Which is why I keep asking you over and over, “is this ok is this ok is this ok?” Because when I’ve asked in the past and people have said it’s ok, it ended up being the opposite. But really that whole experience sort of changed me, grew me up a lil bit, but I don’t ever wanna recreate that reality no matter how much I prepare for it. I’m way more on edge now and I don’t like that feeling, but I do embrace knowing I’m now way better at practicing restraint—not only in writing but in life in general. So yea, I care. But I also care about me more now, and I think that’s the difference between my first book and Fruit Punch.
Carla Lee Allen just turned fifty-five years old on September 7th and feels like a new person. She’s the middle child of four and has worked at the Veterans Affairs in Dallas, Texas, for the past twenty-nine years. She accepts that she can be a little dramatic and loves volunteering and massages. Her dream is to win the lottery.
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