Margo LaPierre

The poems in Ajar navigate the physical and psychological dangers of womanhood through the flattening lens of mood disorder. Psychosis isn't the opposite of reality--it's another perceptual system. If neurotypical thought measures the world in centimetres, this collection measures it in inches, gallons, amperes. Ajar celebrates radical recovery from gendered violence and psychotic paradigm shifts, approaching madness through prismatic inquiry. As time converges within us, we find new ways to heal and grow. From the emergency room to the pharmacy to the fertility clinic to the dis/comfort of home and memory, this collection humanizes bipolar psychosis.

What happens when we believe in something that isn't there? What happens when we doubt our own history? We cling to the solidity of physical space. Our abstracted sense of being swells to its limits, presses against its boundary of skin, bumps up against the world. Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes explores the idea that we as humans are undefined, chaotic, that we come to know ourselves through the spaces we inhabit and the people we encounter.