My next chapbook, Were-Jag, was released by Bottlecap Press.
Were-Jag by Suzette Bishop intones, “Were-Jaguar/Where-Jaguar/Wear-Jaguar.” This is where we are: what was, what’s gone, the mask fashion creates. What does it mean to make commodities of ourselves? Three voices entwine in this long collage poem, a journaling voice, a vintage women’s magazine voice, and an encyclopedic voice describing the jaguar and its sacred place, “An eater of hearts” who doesn’t care about being pleasing; “They can roar but not purr.” The speaker of the journal sections mulls over the meaning of her memories, dreams, messy relationships, and female family members who can’t maintain the façades expected of them.
Bishop’s jagged edges where these voices unravel into each other sometimes provide answers, warnings, predictions, “Your own civilization will end.” Or a better understanding of our jaguar selves, living by scents, instincts, “A girl runs to catch the ball, her lithe body swinging through the air,” perhaps a memory of jaguar-like litheness. By contrast, the magazine erasures insist we look cool, unruffled at all times, a still ornament in artificial light, while the speaker of journal entries remarks about a party where “all the women are in costumes; I feel out of place.” In the midst of hacks about how to accessorize a black dress, how to hide falling apart, the magazine voice startles with a revelation about how to be an artist, the importance of having the right tools, being an observer.
suzettemariebishop 