“I tell them I love them because I do. Because I can,” (18) says the narrator of Mariah Rigg’s All Hat, No Cattle (Bull City Press, 2023), about a bunch of green onions she has been keeping alive on the sill above her sink. The use of can sparks a question that runs through this collection: what can we love? In six short essays, this chapbook packs a powerful emotional punch, exploring the complexity of love–romantic, familial, one-sided, long distance. Each relationship is presented in an honest and undramatic way, as no relationship is perfect, not even the narrator’s relationship with her green onions. She must leave some behind to build a new life in a different city, yet the memories are preserved and presented with love. They are not tainted by time or emotion.
Throughout all six essays, Rigg’s narrator navigates her relationship with C (who is addressed by his initial or in the second person). In “Suspended,” the narrator is in love with C, and C is either blissfully unaware or ignorant of this reality as he casually shares stories about an ex-girlfriend. The narrator tries not to imagine this ex being attacked by a goose as she acknowledges that she “only knew he loved her and not me” (Rigg 3). Their relationship is fraught with guessing on the part of the narrator. Though the essay starts with C’s hand on her knee, the narrator “never knew when or if I had the right to touch him” (Rigg 5). This guessing continues in later essays and the constant push-pull in this relationship makes it painfully relatable.
Rigg weaves beautifully from external to internal landscapes throughout All Hat, No Cattle. The narrator wishes time would slow, and then, “The breeze stopped, the cottonwood seeds stuck in the air, suspended… The breeze resumed and the seeds fell to the water, rushing away” (5). Readers are given listed descriptions, images that stand out and define the moment for the narrator, such as, “The last petals of June’s roses drop through the window’s glass. I smell the honey of the baklava you bought from the store on the corner, the sharp Parmesan you shred over spinach-swirled eggs. Fleetwood Mac is playing” (Rigg 7). Each essay feels like a frozen moment, a snapshot of this love before it rushes away, first to different cities, then to separate lives.
In the second essay, “Gut-Punching,” the narrator’s relationship with C has become sexual. Rigg makes it clear, however, that their bond goes beyond sex, acting as a source of comfort and familiarity. Rigg writes, “You stand behind me. My head rests on your thighs, the water flowing from you to me, warmed twice over by the heater and your body. It’s dirty, but it can’t be worse than our own piss, which we lay in for months, curled inside our mothers” (6). There is deep intimacy in this moment and yet, distance still lingers. C’s feelings, and at times, the narrator’s, remain a mystery. After sex, the narrator, addressing C, explains, “your face whispering I love you even as your mouth says That was fun. I wish I could blame you, but neither of us has learned how to say what we feel” (Rigg 7). Such withholding is mirrored in Rigg’s writing, as the emotions are not laid out explicitly. The writing does not tell us how the characters feel. Instead, it lets us feel it.
Memories of the narrator’s father are braided through scenes with C in the essays “Linger” and “All Hat, No Cattle.” In the latter, Rigg writes, “Like me, here and in love with C, who’s so much like Dad. Like Dad, going to rehab for coke, then alcohol, only to get addicted to Bikram yoga” (14). There is an added layer of complexity to the familiarity that the narrator experiences with C. In “All Hat, No Cattle,” C drives around his new town, Lubbock, TX, drinking a beer and shouting out to a neighboring car. The narrator remembers drives with her father before he went to rehab. They would yell out the car window and startle pedestrians. Rigg avoids judgment on behalf of the narrator for the behaviors of these characters. They are presented, like the scenery, matter of factly.
The chapbook comes to a close as the relationship with C does. In the final essay, “Blessings,” the narrator is “rootless without C” (17) and therefore holding on to what she can: her green onions, a city that doesn’t suit her, her memories, etc. Here Rigg beautifully depicts our human need to attach to something. Though the onions have given their blessing, the narrator has not yet left Knoxville; she instead feels like she is drowning in the weight of the place. Though we readers aren’t directly told what has happened with C, the onions seem to say it all, “Be free, they tell me. Go forth, somewhere far” (Rigg 18). We can only assume C has done the same: set her free.
So often the messaging around an ended relationship is to throw it out. Burn the photos. Move on. Paint the ex as a villain. The message of this collection is much more human, much more true. All Hat, No Cattle argues for honoring the relationship, the love, and the person. Rigg writes, “The green onions above my windowsill have become part of me through how they’ve nourished me. And though we will no longer be together, I will be grateful for that” (19). If the question of this collection is what can we love, the answer is whatever we please. Love cannot be taken from us when the relationship is. The nourishment stays. We can be grateful for that.
All Hat, No Cattle is available at Bull City Press
Jen Gayda Gupta is a poet, educator, and wanderer. She earned her BA in English at the University of Connecticut and her MA in Teaching English from New York University. Jen lives, writes, and travels across the U.S. in a tiny camper with her husband and their dog. Her work has been published in Up the Staircase, Rattle, Jellyfish Review, Sky Island Journal, The Shore, and others. You can find her @jengaydagupta and jengaydagupta.com.