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Valence by Sarah Ruth Jacobs
ISBN 1 900397 75 7, 40pp A5, $7.50. Flarestack Publishing, 41 Buckley’s Green, Alvechurch, Birmingham, B48 7NG, UK, E-mail , phone +44(0)1214452110.

To call Sarah Ruth Jacobs’ collection ‘powerful’ would be to diminish it. Much of the language is violent, a violence what is more, in the service of disgust and horror, pretty much my reactions to the world when I was her age (21). Nobody let me publish them, though.

Those strong white spider fingers dig between the bricks / finding the visceral, tumid segments of an earthworm / and pulling at its anchor in the dirt, / a sickly strain of flesh, cramps eating my womb…The crypt of your mouth stinks carrion.…
                                                                                 (Aurora)

This book makes for tough reading, and you need a strong stomach. Yet when she pares her style down, and really focuses, something well out of the ordinary can emerge. Shame about the ugly and gratuitous title of what follows

I spread for violent sex on a Tuesday. / I like the hair rippers. / I dig the tit grippers, / the labia snappers, / the hard ass slappers, / the cunt wranglers, / the throat stranglers, / the stiffest boners, / the pistol owners, / the wife beaters, / the placenta eaters. / And when none of this pleases / I’ll spread some diseases / cause womanhood’s a pain / and man’s loss my gain. / I spread for violent sex on Tuesday.      
                                                                                 (Cummunal)