Becca Lawlor

Joseph Donato, Toothache.

Ottawa: above/ground press, 2023. $5.00.

Toothache is Joseph Donato’s debut chapbook, exploring identity, community, mythology, childhood, and thought experiments.Through richly contrasting imagery, Donato’s language is slanted and perceptible in multitudes, all the while creating beguiling glimpses into juicy and aching descriptions.
In “Split Lip” a marvelous assortment of spliced lines containing inner rhymes create a singular focus on a sound and an image: “close knit / tight lip / split /[]/ tilt trip / drip”. These verses make the reader salivate as they repeat that same sound, the mouth looping around the same lilting assonants. This persistent repetition may seem amusing, but it is undercut with the same attention one may get stuck paying to a lip that has been split—its inescapable irritation plagues the individual in the same way these literary devices are employed.
There is horrifically brilliant imagery and connotation being used in “Fruit Salad”: “If my eyes were/ cherry tomatoes I/ would eat them/ []/ I don’t like cherry tomatoes/ but I’ve always/ wanted to eat/ my eyes”. Readers can’t help but feel blinded by this imagery and envision teeth popping our organs like a grape tomato would, gushing forth with sight, blood and all other vital functions. This creepy, disturbing imagery is oddly cheery in how bluntly it’s delivered—persuading readers to follow blindly as they chew through their senses.
Donato delivers complex, charming, and chilling metaphors through plain language that is fashioned in such a way that it bends reality and truths. Readers will be drooling over language as the poems can be read and reread through different lenses, perspectives, and angles. 

Becca Lawlor

Becca Lawlor is a queer writer and editor in their third year of the Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing program at Sheridan College. They have short fiction story in The Bangalore Review, a review in CAROUSEL magazine, are a member of the Meet the Presses collective, and are working as an editorial intern for The Ampersand Review. Living in Mississauga, Becca reads most moments of the day while drinking lukewarm, over-sugared coffee.