Avery Fancher

Both of my works, “the ‘strip’ in strip mall” and “Do You Want to See a Magic Trick?” are inspired by poet Claudia Cortese, who writes about trauma from the perspective of a privileged suburban girl. These epistolary persona poems with their images of embodied monstrousness inspired me to create a character instead of speaking from the “I” point of view. Cortese writes: “creating the character of Lucy gave me a body into which I could pour the dark energy of my girlhood. Writing in the third person—behind the mask of the she, the Lucy—freed me.” In both of my poems I tried to replicate the harsh expectations society places on women. My character Lacey symbolizes my relationship regarding malls, marketplaces, and anything that has to do with consumer culture. Both pieces are placed inside fitting rooms where it is a private area, but it is the most judgmental place to stand other than trial. I hope the epistolary allows the reader direct access to Lacey’s thoughts, feelings, and memories.

“the ‘strip’ in strip mall” is meant to criticize society’s contradicting standards of what people wear and what consent is. The title is uncapitalized to seem small and insignificant, which is how Lacey feels while she is trying on clothes. We hear the sound of a credit card being swiped while she is in the fitting room, to mimic the experience of the body becoming a commodity. When Lacey is taking a dress off, she wishes she could shed her skin like a snake, remembering the time she was sexually assaulted. The line “her little black dress that had said yes” is a nod to a common phrase “how we dress does not mean yes” that is used a lot in SlutWalks, a “transnational movement calling for an end to rape culture, including victim blaming and slut-shaming of sexual assault victims” because of what they wear. Because of what Lacey was wearing when she was raped, she now has a skewed version of herself when she tries on new clothes, timid that she could bring on another assaulter. The image of the rapist then morphs into her own reflection, as feels accountability.

“Do You Want to See a Magic Trick?” pursues related questions from another angle. Instead of seeing her assaulter in the mirror, she sees Alice--just a friend she has run into at the mall. However, Alice turns out to be a reflection of Lacey, bullying herself about what she wears. Alice is depicted snake-like, turning into a waistband measuring tape and squeezing around Lacey to indicate she thinks Lacey looks fat in the dress she is trying on. Because of this, Alice causes Lacey to “transform” and by transforming, she is sucking in her stomach into her abdominal muscles so her stomach appears flat. This is the “magic trick” the title prompts the reader with: to appear thinner than you really are—until perhaps she vanishes.