levelheaded: Practical Joke on My Younger Sister

Walking through Kristina Browder’s poem is like a lesson in efficient poetic styling. Her poem centers around an uncomfortable, erotic moment, which is short, tight and theatrical. We’ll look at how Browder makes use of elements of the poetic stage to convey the drama’s key tensions: uncomfortable sexuality, the turning of the comic into the awkward, and the turning of childhood into adolescence.

In Browder’s poem, a practical joke that is supposed to be childishly comic morphs into a bothersome erotic moment. It is an eccentric moment conveyed by eccentric details, thoughtful word-choice, and crisp line breaks. Here are some examples:

We begin with a Dixie cup, where we could have had just a cup. At this point this detail, which doesn’t have any connotation (does a Dixie cup mean much to you?), is merely funny*. An older sister sneaks into the bathroom while her younger sister showers. We don’t know their ages nor can we guess where the poem is going, so we believe the title and get into a comic mood. The next sentence juxtaposes ice cold water with steam, a hint that something is about to clash. Then, with a great line-break the stanza ends with the line, “kinks my hair.” The break brings our attention to the word “kinks.” We don’t know it yet but this word will echo in our minds soon, when this scene turns awfully kinky.

So the title and first stanza set us up for a joke. Now, we’re reassured for the last time that a joke is coming up, by a one line stanza: “This will be hilarious.” This line alone is italicized, perhaps to indicate it is an internal thought. Yet more interesting is the contribution of the italics to the poem’s styling. Like the Dixie cup, the italicized line is an eccentric element. It doesn’t quite fit, and it doesn’t conform. Subtly, these details add up to the construction of the upcoming moment—an awkward moment that required awkward styling. The poem’s style and content work together.

Now for the transformation of the expected joke into a taboo moment of adolescent sexuality. We start with “I tiptoe and reach my arm above / the rubber ducky-adorned shower curtain.” The speaker is still thinking comedy. The rubber-ducky curtain is one last funny detail that will soon seem out of place, as it hints innocence and childhood, in opposition with what’s to come. This line ends with yet another efficient break: “A turn” hangs there by itself. It’s a turn in the plot, and in style too, since suddenly the speaker loses authority: “I […] reach my arm” becomes “A turn / of my hand.” Active becomes passive. The speaker becomes an observer. This passivity conveys a state of shock, a need to observe from outside, because being inside the scene is uncomfortable, perhaps traumatic.

The scene unravels: a naked sister is revealed, her physicality described with the awkwardly articulated “mass of curlicues,” and the near-scientific detail of “adipose tissue.” This biological accuracy is in place of simple, spoken language; an escape from what is too awkward to speak about.

If we were hoping the younger sister’s response would make us more at ease, the opposite happens. She is quick to cover her nudity, and the tension is never resolved. We are left thinking of “these new features.” “[N]ew” implies the speaker has seen these areas before. Gaaah, awkward. From the title we thought this poem would be a comic relief. Instead, the comedy dissolves and relief never arrives. “Practical Joke on My Younger Sister” is a well-crafted surprise poem, which leaves us uncomfortable in our bodies and minds, the best evidence to its success.

– The Editors