Shopgirls

Marissa Higgins' Shopgirls celebrates the grotesque with unexpected delight. Higgins' precise syllables and subtle alliteration will make you hungry. Flesh, bone, and expectation, Shopgirls is unafraid of breaking and lingering in the resulting pain. You are about to witness the work of a highly skilled surgeon. -Danielle Evennou, author of Difficult Trick How does one negotiate self-preservation in the throes of desire? How do you defamiliarize the familiar that you may understand the self better? Early in Marissa Higgins' chapbook, Shopgirls, the speaker reveals, "I've learned how to preserve/ what remains," and these poems acutely distill the exchange of power dynamics as enrapture defines its own terms. "Don't you know/ what it is to work for love?" we are asked-and haven't "My attempts to please" also been "slow" at times, haven't my fingers reached for something just out of reach, haven't I "[wiggled]/ like a panicked thing, smaller/than a deer or God" in my wantings? With concision-and precision-Higgins refuses to shy away from the body in desire, leaving the reader wanting also to be "even closer to what is/ and was pleasure." -Flower Conroy, author of The Awful Suicidal Swans In Shopgirls, Marissa Higgins creates a world that explores human insecurity by juxtaposing fashion and science. The "anatomy" of her poems "bulging beneath denim" "wound[s] in ways [Higgins] does not know how to heal." It is tight poetry that "takes [you] from behind" and forces "bruise[s] to blossom." It is an emotionally charged volume that pushes our perceptions about capitalism and our bodies to new levels-a genuine vivisection. -Jessica Hylton, author of The Great Scissor Hunt