“Amy Thatcher has concocted a weird girl religion in which genesis is a verb, the speaker’s halo is unhooked like a brassiere, and the savior is ‘limp as a dandelion / in a girl’s dirty hand.’ These poems are raw and intricately made, hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly real. And—irony of ironies—their exhilarative blasphemy jolts me toward holiness.” —Diane Seuss
“Amy Thatcher isn’t afraid of poems that get down into the sexy nitty-gritty of spirituality, poems that call out the twisted abuses of religion, poems in which saints roam Philadelphia streets. Amy Thatcher is the best kind of weird girl. She sees our weird world and doesn’t pretend it’s otherwise.” —Denise Duhamel
“These poems feature the kind of girls who grow up hurling their ‘bodies like ashtrays // toward men who would break / them’ while saints and sinners (Bridget, both Marys, Rick James, the poet’s complicated mother) preside over the brash sophistications of Catholic working-class Philadelphia. Weird Girl is a tough-minded, wise, witty, open-hearted debut.” —Daisy Fried
Poems that confront faith, sexuality, mother-daughter relationships, and the patriarchy to celebrate weird girls everywhere.
Amy Thatcher’s Weird Girl recasts female saints as quirky, transgressive characters, examines the sometimes-bizarre landscape of American girlhood, reckons with classism and self-definition on the fringes of acceptability. With gusto and humor, Thatcher confronts the taboo—the intrusive, macabre, violent, obsessive, and lonely. Rooted in a working-class Philadelphia Catholic upbringing and embracing the unconventional and the unrefined, this collection captures the experiences of a first-generation college student, the grief of losing a difficult mother, the grandeur and swoon of religious ecstasy, and a girl’s struggle against systems of male power. Weird Girl is a collection for the dreamers, the oddballs, and the resilient ones who have learned to thrive in their own offbeat light: where vulnerability is strength, and the most authentic stories are often the most peculiar.
Amy Thatcher is a native of Philadelphia, where she works as a public librarian. Her poems have been published by Tahoma Literary Review, The Journal, Copper Nickel, Salt Hill, Split Lip, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Best Spiritual Literature, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net anthologies and twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Contents
Weird GirlConversation at Birth
Our Bodies, Ourselves
Saints of Slight Power
Eve in Philadelphia
Rick James in the Garden of Eden
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
Annunciation
On the Rag
Roadkill
Magdalene at the Crucifixion
My Therapist Tells Me to Get Acquainted with My Inner Child
Annunciation II
Jesus Flashes Saint Bridget
Saint Joan of Arc
The Queen of Heaven, Carried Away by a Swarm of Bees
The Assumption of the Virgin into Heaven
Saint So-and-So
Mary’s Dream
Mary in the Margins
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The Weird Girl Gives Up Masturbation for Lent
Rick James in the Confessional
Unholy
Saint Bernadette
Trying to Sleep
Mrs. Schaeffer Said I Was an Old Soul
The Weird Girl Breaks into a Grain Elevator
I Keep Referring to the Times I Nearly Died
Poem in Which Burt Reynolds Takes Me to Chemotherapy
“You Have a Young Face for Your Age”
How to Seem Respectable
The World Is Dying Valentine
My Therapist Tells Me to Go for a Walk in the Woods
Philadelphia Story
In-Law Luncheon
Harder Things
I Don’t Believe in Astrology, I Believe in Led Zeppelin
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The Weird Girl Reflects
Poetry
Philadelphia Ars Poetica
You’re Not Wrong, I Learned to Read Early
Darwinism
My Days of Faith Are Over
Poem Beneath a Colt 45 It Works Every Time Billboard
Anywhere in Every Town
Men Tell Me Things
Annunciation Pose
Sorry Too Much
Dream
My Therapist Writes a Prescription
Season of the Witch
My Therapist Tells Me to Try Meditation
Meditations
I Hate My Job at the Public Library
End Days
Atlantic City
Our Lady of Sorrows
