Kelly McQuain’s Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers is his debut collection of poems that follows the chronology of a life from a childhood fraught with conflict, both internal and external, to a young adult life of discovery and reflection, to a maturing relationship with oneself, family, friends, and the world. This collection is not shy in any sense of the word. McQuain’s work is unafraid to put controversy and discomfort in the spotlight and hold them there. Poems grapple with sexuality and identity, experiencing homophobia, surviving abuse, and seeing racism not just in the world but in one’s own close circles. With unabashed honesty, these poems contain humanity, wisdom, and glimmers of comedy.
The table of contents is where this experience begins. The list of sections and poem titles leave readers with more questions than answers, featuring such stirring names as “The Grieving Bone,” “Ruby on Fire,” “Memory Is a Taste That Lingers on the Tongue,” and the title of the very first section of the collection “ex nihilo,” meaning “from nothing.” What comes from nothing? What is a grieving bone? Where will this journey go? The draw of Kelly McQuain’s poems is inescapable.
The titular poem “Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers” is the second featured in the collection. It comes charging out of the gate with vibrant imagery and metaphors that nearly all other works in the collection connect to in one way or another. This poem carries the bittersweet nostalgia of a childhood where there is solace in nature and memory that clashes with the confusion and pain of feeling different and restless. In the very first stanza, the narrator of the poem is left behind but still full of vigor: “Your brother and sister run to catch the horizon. You wade slowly through the lashing, alive with combustion, eager for bursting.” This feeling will follow the poems in the collection and be a connecting thread as the narrator searches for meaning and identity. Like the collection as a whole, its titular poem follows an arc from innocence, to questioning, to discovery. The poem builds tension and promise of what is to come of “boyhood’s sweet undoing.” The ending stanza describes things the narrator will experience: “Someday soon you’ll understand—how music marks a mating move, how forewing against notched leg strums the same tune teenage boys knead into the pockets of fraying jeans.” The crucial question is asked: “But where to learn of this authentic self?” Then the poem promises the future the reader will soon be able to watch unfold: “Not on this hill, not in that house. Something calls you somewhere else.”
McQuain’s poems offer perspective on the intertwining of love and loss through a lens of striving for understanding and self acceptance. In poems describing the narrator’s relationships with his father, step-grandfather, brother, mother, friends, and lovers, no connection is detailed without a sense of grief. “Architect” and “Southern Heat” are two poems back to back about the narrator’s male role models in his father and step-grandfather respectively. “Architect” speaks of spite and things left unfinished that the narrator still can’t banish from his mind years later, the verbal abuse of his father and seeing examples of what he doesn’t want to become twisting with an undeniable longing. “Southern Heat” speaks bluntly of direct racism and homophobia. The seven-year-old narrator processes slurs and how they hurt after his step-grandfather calls black children what in the poem is called “the Word”—“I couldn’t offer the awkward chuckle someone else in the car did…I knew their hiccup of laughter hid the same disappointment I felt in this man. He didn’t understand that words hurt. I did.” This disappointment, abuse, and death drive a wedge between the narrator and his family despite any bond of love. In future poems we see the narrator is saddened by the loss of connection and still feels the sting of separation and rejection for being “different.” As the collection continues the narrator moves away from his hometown and family in search of a different life and finding himself. Though the path is rocky and dangerous, the narrator constantly finds experiences and people to love and explore life with.
The ending section of the collection titled “tin hearts” shows the child from “Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers” grown into a self-accepting man who now finds comfort in the company he keeps and the home he has. Poems in this section are laced with love and domestic bliss even when the narrator still grapples with his identity and his past. The ending poem “Torn” perfectly describes this. Immediately following a poem titled “Strawberries, Limoncello, Water Ice, Passing Time,” which describes a blissful summer evening where the narrator and his partner share a dessert on their bed, “Torn” describes the narrator slowly and painfully morphing into half a devil. The narrator clearly still grapples with shame about his identity and is afraid there is truth to being labeled a sinner or a devil. The poem ends with hope however: “In the mirror, half a devil and I wonder whether hope might spring from my other side. First sign: a feather.” McQuain’s poems remind readers that to be honest about oneself and the world is a noble pursuit and can indeed bring fulfillment and joy. The pain and fear in one’s life shouldn’t be ignored but instead explored and understood with love and humility.
You can learn more about the author by visiting Kelly McQuain’s website and you can purchase the collection of poems here.
Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers: Poems
Kelly McQuain
Texas Review Press
February 15, 2023
100 pp.
Béa Urbanowski-Womer (she/he/they) is a 3rd year student at Drexel University pursuing a BS in everything and anything that interests them (General Studies). He is currently invested in learning about work being done in museums of natural history to blend his backgrounds in the arts and STEM into one realm. Béa enjoys writing sci-fi and fantasy stories, exploring music unknown to her, and playing videogames in her free time. They hope to one day live in a self-sustaining off grid homestead.