Spotlight series #104 : Jessi MacEachern
Curated by Canadian writer, editor and publisher rob mclennan, the “spotlight” series appears the first Monday of every month.
STATEMENT
Cut Side Down is a textual collage, or a book feasting on books. The title is a metaphor for the sensuous paper cut received when diving face first into the bookcase, and it means to call up the pleasure and pain of contact with so many literary personalities. The poems are collapsing under the weight of influence and the result is a sumptuous, body-and-mind bending landscape. The book aims to destabilise the opposing forces of autobiographical lyric and conceptual experiment.
The hero/ine of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando inspires the collapse of binaries such as sex/gender, fact/fiction, and life/death in poems stuffed with rich allusions to bodies, sex, pleasure, and pain. With aspirations for building a new, literary commons, the poems are also inspired by the long-form poetics of Clark Coolidge (The Crystal Text) and the civic-minded politics of Renee Gladman (Event Factory). Lorine Niedecker’s folk oeuvre, Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems, and tarot join pure invention in autobiographically-styled poems ricocheting from childhood swamps to multilingual cityscapes. Ultimately, through being immersed in the reading life of the poet and spying through the keyholes of fantasy, Cut Side Down is a false autobiographical engagement with desire and memory.
TWO POEMS
Cunt Was Her Favourite Word
I was open to it
& changed by it.
I was sitting pretty
in a private bed
& waiting to be made a spectacle. Dying
to have my sides split & insides prodded.
I hoped to lose count of the white jackets
in the room of my transformation.
Since this is fantasy I can say
the room was my mind
the bed your sweetly smiling face.
In fourteen centuries I’ve had one lover
with whom I copulate rarely but ferociously.
We are so ill made for each other
that the love-making causes harm.
I walk gingerly into the conversation
about pursuing another’s genitals. Would a new bush
be the spice we need? Would some young
crowing take us into another century?
You back down History’s halls
& wield a femur bone in response. We will
proceed as two
or more
giantesses.
Absence is no thing
to mourn. It feeds
our immortality.
Button Factory
I am seeking the means for transubstantiation
all simmering. My special sweetness
is an upside-down bat. Have I toppled over a balcony?
This one, no. But if we feel behind the present surface
we’ll find a miniature self with her face to the sky
and his spine a strike against archaeology.
The silk kerchief is listening to the nervy recitation of facts:
“I fell,” I’ll say if saying it will win me love.
I am in the habit of building reality. As no one,
I was fertilizing the satisfaction draped over
our monogamous thrall. Luxury! I wanted to nose
this into the air like honey before the harm of men
returned, but the trouble with sermoning began again.
My aluminum siding was plenty reflective of meaning,
yes, but this was at the cost of freedom and softness.
How do I stand the dullness? While kneading the dough
for my breakfast, a feast of daylilies and resignment,
I remember: Buttons! these are always on her mind
so I add them to his running list, singing softly as I elbow
the whiteness. My folks are visiting soon.
Life will be low then.
Jessi MacEachern, born in Epekwitk/Prince Edward Island, currently lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, where she teaches English literature. As a poet, professor, and scholar of contemporary feminist poetics, her critical and creative writing has appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada and around the world. Her debut poetry collection A Number of Stunning Attacks was published by Invisible in 2021. Cut Side Down (Invisible, 2025) is her second book.
