Sadie McCarney
Sadie McCarney (she/her) is a queer, neurodivergent writer-performer based on Prince Edward Island, Canada. She is the author of the poetry collections Live Ones (University of Regina Press, 2019/ tall-lighthouse uk, 2020) and Your Therapist Says It’s Magical Thinking (forthcoming from ECW Press, 2023) as well as the found poetry performance text chapbook/ mental health memoir Head War (Frog Hollow Press, 2021). Sadie’s work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, The Walrus, Literary Review of Canada, and The Gay & Lesbian Review, as well as in various literary journals.
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Cherry
When X's silhouette was sharp enough to knife an assailant (1), she toted a glass-bottle grenade of cherry soda into a plus size store. She was there with Y, whose fingers danced a furious strip search of the sale rack - longing for a dress that would love her back. X was a bony blip - a size 6 - a nothing. (2) The drink in her plastic Zellers bag sloshed with foreboding. (3) Cherry soda trickled out behind her, like a telltale trail of true-crime blood: first the changing rooms, where Y tried on her dress, then out to the main store where it ranged its red chaos all over the decadent display of G-cup bras, relaxed-fit jeans.
The red liquid luxuriated in being so free, adhered itself in sticky splendour to the linoleum tile like cheap red lip gloss. The store now held a scarlet map of X's shame. She escaped, with yet another preloved “sorry” (4), from that perverse version of Hansel and Gretel's crumbs. (5)
X crawled her way to and from and around the lovely/ beleaguered Boston, slumbered on the outbound commuter rail as it scrolled beneath the red arrow of the Citgo sign. Dreamt herself whole in 3X, 4X, 5X. (6)
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1 A hard, triangular jaw; hips and ribs that jutted out like homes hammered into the side of a cliff.
2 All she ever wanted was Grandma's tender, pull-it-apart roast beef dinner with singed-edge roast potatoes, candied yams, a glut of rich gravy. All of it all to herself.
3 No one knew she lulled herself to sleep at night with delusions of balloons; the expanding universe; expanding. That she once taunted the chubbiest girl in her grade with the hot flush of what she now knows to be envy.
4 Since age 9, X had sought to deny herself all pleasure: a paltry portion of Oat Bran for breakfast, endless apologies for each imagined wrong. But she never tried to be thin on purpose like the dietician, the doctor, and the psychologist all said.
5 How X would have loved to be Hansel, fat but still able to blame the witch.
6 She dreamt herself big as that Citgo sign, relentless cherry red.
The red liquid luxuriated in being so free, adhered itself in sticky splendour to the linoleum tile like cheap red lip gloss. The store now held a scarlet map of X's shame. She escaped, with yet another preloved “sorry” (4), from that perverse version of Hansel and Gretel's crumbs. (5)
X crawled her way to and from and around the lovely/ beleaguered Boston, slumbered on the outbound commuter rail as it scrolled beneath the red arrow of the Citgo sign. Dreamt herself whole in 3X, 4X, 5X. (6)
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1 A hard, triangular jaw; hips and ribs that jutted out like homes hammered into the side of a cliff.
2 All she ever wanted was Grandma's tender, pull-it-apart roast beef dinner with singed-edge roast potatoes, candied yams, a glut of rich gravy. All of it all to herself.
3 No one knew she lulled herself to sleep at night with delusions of balloons; the expanding universe; expanding. That she once taunted the chubbiest girl in her grade with the hot flush of what she now knows to be envy.
4 Since age 9, X had sought to deny herself all pleasure: a paltry portion of Oat Bran for breakfast, endless apologies for each imagined wrong. But she never tried to be thin on purpose like the dietician, the doctor, and the psychologist all said.
5 How X would have loved to be Hansel, fat but still able to blame the witch.
6 She dreamt herself big as that Citgo sign, relentless cherry red.
Commentary
Sadie on “Cherry”:
This poem started out with personal experience- e.g. I really did spill cherry soda all over a plus-size clothing store, and I really was a student outside of Boston - but the journey that it took me on after that kernel was planted has an intimacy all its own. I found myself confronting certain questions, like "What is a good body?" and "What is a shape worth striving for?", so that as the poem took form, so too did the protagonist's desire to inhabit a fat body. The footnotes represent the wants and dreams that X won't admit, even to herself. My hope is that readers see themselves in X's story - whatever it is they find themselves longing for.
Managing Editor Shon Mapp on “Cherry”:
McCarney's "Cherry" is a stirring exploration of the conflicting relationship one often has with food and body image. The experimental form provides both a structural and contextual disassembling of the self in its clever use of prose and footnotes. The thoughtful yet grandiose language is employed with precision and creates undertones of dark humor that feel relatable and compassionate. I most admire the handling of relationships through juxtaposition. We see the consequences of X's longing through the cherry soda that "luxuriated in being so free." What I love most about this piece are the footnotes. Whether they are read inserted within the piece or separately, they create a layered backstory to X's evolution. Sadie McCarney masterfully pulls the reader into the center of a nuanced tug-of-war by forcing us to question our perceptions about what a body should be.
This poem started out with personal experience- e.g. I really did spill cherry soda all over a plus-size clothing store, and I really was a student outside of Boston - but the journey that it took me on after that kernel was planted has an intimacy all its own. I found myself confronting certain questions, like "What is a good body?" and "What is a shape worth striving for?", so that as the poem took form, so too did the protagonist's desire to inhabit a fat body. The footnotes represent the wants and dreams that X won't admit, even to herself. My hope is that readers see themselves in X's story - whatever it is they find themselves longing for.
Managing Editor Shon Mapp on “Cherry”:
McCarney's "Cherry" is a stirring exploration of the conflicting relationship one often has with food and body image. The experimental form provides both a structural and contextual disassembling of the self in its clever use of prose and footnotes. The thoughtful yet grandiose language is employed with precision and creates undertones of dark humor that feel relatable and compassionate. I most admire the handling of relationships through juxtaposition. We see the consequences of X's longing through the cherry soda that "luxuriated in being so free." What I love most about this piece are the footnotes. Whether they are read inserted within the piece or separately, they create a layered backstory to X's evolution. Sadie McCarney masterfully pulls the reader into the center of a nuanced tug-of-war by forcing us to question our perceptions about what a body should be.