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Written in a wry and knowing voice, Jessica McEntee’s debut chapbook Jackie O. Suffers Two Husbands looks at topics ranging from the bittersweet realities of motherhood to the mad headiness of desire. Interspecies Communication, explores the oddness and limitations of language–how we use words to demarcate pets from animal sources of food, for example–while Ship of Theseus hearkens to an ancient philosophical question about how identity changes over time. In Defense of Vulnerable Men offers a tongue-in-cheek rallying cry against men who take liberties with women’s bodies, asking, Does the town butcher ever declare/I’d prefer not to sell/that pink ground chuck/I just put on display/bound in shimmering cellophane? The titular poem, Jackie O. Suffers Two Husbands Before She Claims Someone Else’s reads like dark comedy, ending on an expression of intense longing: Sliding a finder down the tuck behind/her knee, he whispers a reminder to them both–breathe. McEntee invokes a shape-shifting world in which an imperious daughter instantly [contracts] into the shape of a child, and a woman reflecting on past lovers and their need for unburdening themselves speaks of her own reticence: I’ve lodged my secrets/beneath the sand mound/of my breast./That spot’s never borne/the mark of any ex. Sad, ironic–and ultimately hopeful–these poems introduce a startling new talent.
