antibody, Rebecca Salazar
McClelland and Stewart, 2025
In Rebecca Salazar’s antibody, the collection that follows on her equally stunning book, sulphurtongue, the poems are rooted in the physicality of human bodies, and grapple with the damage that can be done to a person through sexual violence, PTSD, and trauma. In a place of such darkness, where does one find slivers of light? After a wounding comes healing and then a reclamation of self, identity, and power. That’s where light lives in dark places, and that’s what is conveyed in antibody.
At the start of the book, there is a dedication that also serves as a trigger warning to readers. There’s an honesty here, and a clear voicing of what has traditionally been silenced, as Salazar writes: “To fellow survivors, this offering: these poems relive in graphic detail the experience of sexual violence, silencing, pregnancy loss, chronic illness, and suicidality. What matters more than this book is your consent, your agency in choosing whether or how much of it you read.” The poet, then, at the very start of the collection, reminds the reader of the power of their own agency: it is their choice to read (or not read) onward. For myself as a reader, I read it in little bits, moving forward and then going backwards, dipping in and out as I felt necessary. It was a good lesson for me in how to think more critically about how to manage what could be a challenging, emotional poetic read.
In “True,” the speaker says they study the stories of true crime podcasts, researching men like Ted Bundy and Charles Manson “to read in retrospect how you/groomed me,” realizing as time passes that a memory must be recalibrated “to fit this profile” of “step one love-bomb,/step two gaslight step three nitpick step four blame shift step five break down step six death threat step six death threat step six death threat.” The poem continues, documenting an “explosive narcissist” who is “stoking flammable girls,” grooming them. “True” is logically followed by “Canon,” which takes on the voice of a condescending male editor or professor—someone who enjoys wielding their position of power to female students in the academic hierarchy, perhaps—all in italics: “my face launches a thousand/lawsuits for harassment,/but sweetie, you need me;/just look at your line breaks./allow me to edit your/unasked consent, break/your imagined hymen over/quibbles about hyphens.” Power struggles that exist because of patriarchal organizations have long been exposed by many women writers in their work, but these two poems remind the reader that not many things have changed, even with the rise of feminism over the years. Instead, the patriarchal rot settles in and roots itself in a toxic manner. It is in the voicing of these transgressions and wounds that the poet empowers herself, encouraging her readers to do that as well. Silence does nothing but perpetuate the toxicity; speaking up is the only way.
Struggle, and then survival, play a major role in antibody. Nothing to do with chronic illness is romanticized or glossed over to make it sound less challenging. In “Anaphylaxis,” the speaker spits out reproachful words: “tell me I’m overreacting/this body refuses/to breathe air with yours,” and hypothesizes that “survivor flesh rejects a world/that will not let it live/what can the gut derive/from whiteness and abuse.” The speaker is about to “tattoo this spell in epi-pen & pfizer on my seizing thigh,” raising their voice in favour of masking up and fighting for greater accessibility. In the face of the dissolution of thoughtfulness around the world, the reader is left to think of what it means to be marginalized by trauma, or by chronic illness, or by a society that seems less and less caring: “I dare you/tell me i overreact/as my skin blooms with hives/ & just try/to shove your matter/down this swollen throat.” Female victims of abuse often—wrongly—find themselves defending their accusations when they ought not to have to be re-traumatized by giving voice to the truth of the offences committed against them. Speaking up against the silencing is so much of the triumph of antibody.
Some of Salazar’s strongest poems are ones with words and names erased. “SLAPP/article i, “SLAPP/article ii”, “SLAPP/article iii”, and “SLAPP/dissolution” are a series of poems that thread their way through the pages of antibody. Text has been redacted so that thick black bars blind the reader, leaving them to imagine names or places or specific references. SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) are defined by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association as “lawsuits, or the threat of a lawsuit, directed against individuals or organizations, in order to silence and deter their public criticisms, and advocacy for change.”
These blacked out, erasure poems are echoed in other poems like “Oilspill,” when the speaker’s voice begins with: “i name ________ and the world ends./run. stop writing & live in margins./never settle longer than a day, carry no comforts.” To speak up means that a woman must risk being further marginalized and re-traumatized. The legal trials that are meant to serve as retribution and justice for victims who speak up are not that at all. Instead, “our trials/taught us well to mince steps, locate drag marks/of a body pulled below.” Those who stand and speak up in support of the victim try to pull her from “apocalyptic waters” and “skirt sinkholes,” end up birthing her “back/to shore, her naked legs necrotic with black welts.” Their rescue of the woman who has dared to speak up lands them on the supposed safety of a well-established shore, but soon enough it is clear that the aftermath of a trial will “churn the beach into a tailings pond,/a petri dish where we, the specimens, are pinned.” Like dead butterflies or insects, to be marked and categorized, the fight seems sometimes too much to bear. One need only look at recent legal cases of public note in Canada to see how the women who speak their truths are retraumatized and punished. Still, speaking up is exactly what must occur for things to change.
Salazar reaches into an ancient and rich metaphorical body of knowledge and wisdom that is constructed of divination tools—in the archetypal imagery of the Tarot, in astrology, and other ancient teachings. Here, too, there is a reclamation of old teachings that were passed down through the maternal lines. In “Too Late to Say Antediluvian,” the poet writes: “carmen and I bring molten spruce boughs/to the shell of the abandoned church,/adorning crook and crevice with the frizz/of withered branch. i lay my tarot on the altar/where the catholics once broke bread.” In the ruins of an old church, there’s a witchy reclamation of power, an upending and reworking of who has the power to tell the truth, the story. In “San Carmen,” a poem-prayer, the speaker says: “queer ancestress,/brown paper doll torn into convent/schools across los andes, pray for us”, “let us not/be known for silence taught us/by our fathers,” and “let our bodies never/line the gilt floors of school chapels/to be trodden on by men who claimed/our childhoods as communion/to be spilled.” It ends, triumphantly: “let none choose/for us how we choose to breathe.” No man, religion, or organizational structure should define what a person chooses to identify as, or try to push people into categories with labels on them.
Rebecca Salazar’s antibody follows on the heels of the excellent work that the poet was doing in sulphurtongue, crafting a collection of strong queer, feminist verse that encourages the reader to be brave enough to speak up against many types of systemic violence that result in societal and individual wounding. In giving voice to our truest selves, even in the face of intimidation and patriarchy, antibody offers us many reasons to celebrate persistence, tenacity, and the clarity of a voice that speaks up against silencing.
