The Precious Persistence of Grief: K. Iver's Short Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco

Published earlier this month by Milkweed Editions, K. Iver's debut collection, Short Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco, is a tender examination of the intricacies of grief, love, gender, and the lasting impressions of deep human connection. This collection is artfully stitched together—not only through its aforementioned themes—but also through its depiction of the relationship between the speaker and their beloved. In its entirety, Short Film's narrative focuses on trans love and violence, gender norms, as well the imprint of deep intimacy and the persistence of grief and loss through time. 

In the collection's second poem, titled "For Missy Who Never Got His New Name," Iver gives insight into the lives of both the speaker and their beloved, masterfully moving between past, present, and future. They write: 

                   I hear the stars are sentient. Which gives 
                   me hope for the nitrogen feeding your grass. 
                   Even more for the mole ending the day's 
                   burrow in your skull. I'm told your atoms 
                   are still atoms. Somewhere you're sitting
                   by a pool picking apart the physics 
                   of swimming.

Through the speaker's musings on time, physics, and the chemical makeup of the world around us, the reader first learns that the "you" in the poem, or the beloved—Missy—has died. As the poem continues, Iver reveals more about the circumstances in which the speaker and Missy's relationship began: "In the hallway of a large / high school in Mississippi, you're again / the sophomore guarding my classroom / entrance with a letter." By going back in time, Iver unveils the history, informing readers that their bond began in adolescence. Toward the end of the poem, Iver fast-forwards to the imagined future—one in which Missy lives and can experience the life that he was never able to envision:

                                                         Picture two scars
                   ​liberating a torso. A first name that doesn't hiss. 
                   Soon, a Brooklyn apartment. We pretend
                   it finally happened for you. It really did.

Indeed, Iver does not shy away from pain. Instead, the collection leads the reader through their loss with unflinching lucidity. By revealing Missy's death to readers within the opening pages, the remainder of the collection then expands upon the circumstances of their beloved's death, as well as their decades-long process of grieving. They show this concept of grief persisting through time with great poignancy and clarity in "Mississippi, Missing, Missy, Miss-":

                                      In the car, I scream for a racoon

                   ​failing to lift his own body with his tail. A grief 
                   more bearable than getting lost in the dual 

                   image of you squatting in the gym one day 
                   and dangling from a light fixture the next.

In these lines, Iver again moves seamlessly through time: in the present, they depict the moment in which the speaker reacts to the sight of a car striking an unsuspecting racoon and, in the past, they depict the disparity between the image of Missy "in the gym one day" and dying by suicide the next. Here, readers see that the speaker attempts to grieve juxtaposed with images in the present as they struggle to re-visit the memory of the day Missy died. 

Throughout the collection, phones appear as a recurring motif—they represent a vehicle for coping with grief, as well as a means to summon memory.  Later in "Mississippi, Missing, Missy, Miss-," Iver writes, "In my dreams you call from the decade-old / landline that held our breaths until 3 a.m. / There, I can see you leaning on the blue wall, / saying you're alive and so sorry." The poem "Who is This Grief For" goes on to explore the physical manifestation of loss through an acupuncture session, where the image of a phone appears again:

                   Her needle tries to release 
                   a decade-old phone call
                   stuck in the tight meat 
                   between my index finger
                   and thumb. 

                   I pretend my body's 
                   ​ready. Picture the old phone 
                   receiver's words Missy 
                   and suicide pressuring 
                   into steam. I pretend 
                   the needle doesn’t hurt. 

In these lines, Iver reveals the full significance of the phone imagery as they inform readers that it was a phone call that informed them of Missy’s suicide. And, with this context, the poem depicts the speaker's body as a sort of catalog of grief—honing in on the knots and tense areas in their body within the context of their loss. 

Throughout this collection, Iver continues to revisit this idea of what grief is and what it becomes, showing that it can be painful, precious, tangible, and even imaginative. Indeed, Short Film often dwells in the imagined future—one in which the speaker and Missy's time together extends beyond their actual lived experiences. 

Many of these poems focus on the relationship, and they often simultaneously explore themes like family, gender, and the cyclicality of violence. In "Family of Origin Content Warning," Iver writes: 

                                                         The wife
                   is my mother. Sometimes, she forgets. 
                   Sometimes she thinks she's ten again, 
                   watching her bedroom door, afraid 
                   her father will turn the brass knob. 
                   That was decades ago. 

Later, they add:

                   The mother loved the child. So much.
                   Everyone says so. Everyone who knows
                   that, on an April weekend, the mother 
                   left me, the child, in her very first bedroom
                   whose door opened—while the child slept— 
                   to a grandfather’s outline.

This poem—which is made up of one long stanza—examines family dynamics through the lens of generational trauma. Iver speaks of themself, their mother, and their grandfather as they illustrate how both emotional and physical trauma leave a lasting mark on the present and future. 

"Because You Can't" serves as the collection’s final elegy. This poem, unlike many others, situates itself firmly in the present moment as Iver chronicles their everyday experiences: standing in front of an Egon Schiele painting, feeling the weight of their current lover on their body, and observing raccoons. They write, "Missy, this is me moving on." Even with that declaration, though, Missy's enduring presence remains—and readers recognize that, for the speaker, moving on does not mean forgetting:

                   There’s a noon rain to get caught in and many 
                   clavicles to behold. I wish you could see this one,
                   ​tilting across a century. 

Order a copy of Short Film Starring My Beloved's Red Bronco here.

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K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet from Mississippi. Their poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, TriQuarterly, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Their book Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco won the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry and was published by Milkweed Editions in January 2023. Iver is the 2021-2022 Ronald Wallace Fellow for Poetry at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. They have a Ph.D. in poetry from Florida State University.  

Marissa Ahmadkhani has been published in journals such as Southern Indiana Review, Zone 3, The Journal, and poets.org, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2015, 2017, and 2022. She lives in Southern California.