Molly Cross-Blanchard
Molly Cross-Blanchard
Biography
Molly Cross-Blanchard is a white and Métis writer and editor born on Treaty 3 territory (Fort Frances, ON), raised on Treaty 6 territory (Prince Albert, SK), and living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, BC). She did an English BA at the University of Winnipeg and a Creative Writing MFA at UBC, and is now the publisher at Room magazine. Her debut poetry chapbook is I Don't Want to Tell You, published with Rahila's Ghost Press in 2018, and her debut full-length book of poetry is Exhibitionist, published with Coach House Books in 2021. Find out more at mollycrossblanchard.com or by following her on Twitter and Instagram (@mollyecb).
Poetics Statement
“I write poems against shame—shame about the body and its functions, our identities, and our behaviours as social beings who fall in love and get hurt—oscillating between the consuming heaviness of shame and the complete rejection of it. The major themes and subject matter in my poems are romantic love, body image, pop culture, anxiety and depression, sex, Indigeneity, food, childhood, desire, disclosure, embarrassment, and fantasy. What the speaker of my poems wants more than anything is to tell you the worst things about herself with the hope that you’ll still like her in the end.
I blends epistolary, confessional, lyric, and prose forms, especially favouring the poetic statement and contemporary plainspeak, and I try to use humour and sharp thematic and formal turns act as vehicles to empathy and reader comprehension. There is variety across my body of work with regard to rhythm, shape, voice, and tone, and one of my publishing goals is to avoid alienating readers with complex language, resulting (hopefully) in work that appeals to both new readers of poetry and seasoned poetry fans.
I hope you’ll be able to laugh with (and at?) my poems, and let them take you inward. Feel free to gently poke fun at me, and yourself, and know that you have a friend who understands how you’re feeling. I hope these poems will allow you to get lost for a while in a world that feels less lonely.”
Sample of Poet's Work
EXHIBITIONIST
The most orgasms I ever had in one go
come over Christmas vacation
in my childhood basement bedroom:
door cracked open, sheets
peeled back, pussy
in plain view of the cat
clawing carpet. Is this how flashers feel
in their trench coats and
chest hair? I’d like to sit
in the park with my thumb stuck
up my nose and wait
for someone to notice. I want to be more
like the woman in Burger King
who eats fries straight off the floor,
the woman who cries in Walmart
when her preteen son says Fuck you, Mom
for the first time in front of the greeter
yanking carts. At the strip club
I eat onion rings, watch the dancer
watching me from upside down
in her halo of light. When will my roommate notice
the way I air-dry underwear on the corner
of the hallway mirror, symbol of sex
in his reflection? I want to feel
like a display-model lipstick — dug-at nub
smeared across the mouths of strangers, a much-handled
sample of the real thing.
WAY OUT, OR
POEM I WROTE WHILE JOGGING ON 12TH AVE
If that Purolator van hops the curb, crushes
my pelvis and spleen, New Balance tumbling acrobatic
into the intersection free of my body, triumphant
bloom of blood across my sweats. If I’m tube-fed
in the hospital and my body has to eat
its own fat while my exes watch
from the visitors’ wing, distraught
and horny. I’m unable to sit upright,
my new job has to be done by someone
else. I’m released from my contract. I’m brave,
not depressed. Pointing to each purple scar,
the brace around my neck, the needle
pumping morphine into my wrist, I say See? This
is why. And the bosses say You poor thing.
A lawyer from the tv show Suits goes to court for me,
wins a giant settlement from Purolator.
I never have to work again. I heal. My body
meets this dismembering with fervour
and I’m stupid beautiful. Edward Cullen
has drained me of my mortal blood
and filled my flesh with liquid marble.
While the sexy physical therapist is testing
the mobility of my new titanium hip, he can’t help
himself, he eats my pussy and then
tells me I taste like peaches and I really do
taste like peaches. When we swap
tender vows ’til death do us, two doves
fly a heart around the sun.
WHEN WE’RE YOUNG AND INSECURE ABOUT OUR INTELLIGENCE
after Monica McClure
Serena never talks to her mom on the phone
while she’s pooping. As soon as she buys toilet paper
Serena takes it out of the plastic and puts it in a drawer.
Has she seen me flick a booger at the floor? Serena never
sticks loose hair to the wall when she showers, and she knits
while she’s watching Netflix. I don’t do anything
while I’m watching Netflix.
Serena has the coolest clothes. She wears these shoes
you’d only see in a Billie Eilish video. Billie Eilish
is seventeen. When I was seventeen I was so worried
about the hem of my Giant Tiger jeans. Now I read
my horoscope and itemize each sadness
in a notebook. Billie Eilish reads her horoscope
and has her people build a theme park. Serena
reads her horoscope and just can’t be bothered.
One time I ran out of toilet paper and used
a torn-off piece of tampon box to wipe. When Billie Eilish
runs out of toilet paper, her people go to Walgreens
and then she makes toilet-paper cranes and crushes them
with her butt cheeks for a music video, and it’s ART. Serena
never runs out of toilet paper. When Serena leaves a party
to poop, and upon her return a friend hands back her vodka soda
asking, How was your poop? she never
replies, Disappointing.