Can’t Think Straight by Isabel Scheck

A gentle, melancholic collection of poetry about longing and love, Isabel Scheck’s Can’t Think Straight makes a profound and heartfelt emotional impact through simplicity and symbolism.

This short, easily readable book contains 35 poems, all focused on similar themes of wishing for companionship. The female-coded narrator expresses her desire for a girlfriend and imagines what they could do together: activities like going to the fair, having a picnic, making art, watching movies, baking cupcakes, stargazing, and attending Pride.

Scheck’s tight focus on simple activities – as opposed to over-the-top romantic gestures – effectively highlights the intensity of longing for basic connection during periods of loneliness, particularly for marginalized members of the gay community who routinely face discrimination. The collection also repeats common symbols associated with love, such as butterflies and stars, in inventive and imaginative ways, emphasizing love’s fervency. For example, the lines “No one told me that the butterflies would / be so violent whenever I am around her” use the language of aggression to perfectly describe the narrator’s heightened feelings.

While sometimes the duplicated themes and imagery can cause the poems to seem too closely related or repeated, overall Can’t Think Straight successfully evokes the overpowering, all-consuming feeling of yearning for another.

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