TOY SOLDIERS

Tollyfield expresses feelings of yearning and mourning in her latest poetry collection.

“I think my ring has found another,” writes Tollyfield in a poem about a lost piece of jewelry, “and I should do the same.” The loss of love, coupled with the inability to move on, is a recurring theme; indeed, the ghosts of former lovers seem to haunt every work. Sometimes it’s a literal haunting, as in “Nina,” in which an old flame troubles the narrator’s sleep: “I pray / and I plead / For your ghost to leave, / And slowly but surely, I feel the reprieve.” The “Clean Sheets” of another poem are unexpectedly tragic, as the bed they cover is no longer the site of romance. In “Lemongrass,” the scent of the eponymous plant reminds the speaker of a love far away: “Write back to me with how things are going. The / lemongrass wilted now winter is snowing.” Tollyfield explores other disappointments and humiliations related to the heart; “Plate of Peas” describes a date that goes wrong almost immediately: “I hypothesize / That you were hoping for a man twice my size.” Other poems address a child’s understanding of war, fires seen across a city’s rooftops, and the ancient warrior queen Boudicca. The poem “P’s and Q’s” bristles regarding the expectations that society foists on women: “I’m told that (as a woman) / I should mind my p’s and q’s. // And I do / But I swear / Like a trooper.”

Together, the 28 works provide a conflicted portrait of longing, angst, and self-assertion. Although the poet is no stickler for meter, she structures many of her poems with predictable rhyme patterns, and they sometime feel a bit forced, as in “Plate of Peas.” The verses tend to be at their best when the author leans into their silliness, as in the winking, delightfully unpretentious opening to “Leather”: “If I come back / (And I may never come back), may I be warm to the / touch and tender; / Shacked up in a terraced that’s slender, with a girl and a babe and a blender.” Even stronger are the free verse poems, such as “The Victoria Line,” in which Tollyfield can concentrate on striking lines without chasing rhymes. Too often, the poems rely on vague, abstract, or clichéd imagery—the smell of home, a loving smile, and a bed of dreams all appear in “Gentle Rain,” for instance. The most powerful work in the collection, “Horse d’Oeuvres,” is also the most surprising. An unremarkable opening transitions to a wedding where the speaker and her lover have stolen off to have sex. The hors d’oeuvres that the guests are eating lead to word association that transforms the lovers’ relationship into a metaphorical horse: “And neighed, neighed, collapsing. Thinking, breathing, / feeling — almost gone save opening its eyes and / sighing, ‘once you were mine, once you were mine, once you were mine.’ ”

A mixed set of poems that alternately falters and inspires.