Dead Girl Cameo

By: m. mick powell

A dazzling docupoetic debut collection interweaving personal loss with the life stories of Aaliyah, Whitney Houston, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and others to explore sexuality, survival, queer mourning, and the afterlives of stardom.

"I made, of my bones, an earth for you: turned the oceans

your favorite shade of light, that deepened, nearly bruised
dusk. Reflected in my palms, what I've made into water
glows amethyst: when you drink from it, you are iridescent,
luminous, lilting."

In m. mick powell’s polyphonic, haunting debut, a chorus of voices conjures up intimate pop herstories that have become a part of our collective cultural lore, resurrecting the vivid lives and artistries of iconic women like Aaliyah, Whitney Houston, TLC’s Left Eye, Phyllis Hyman, and Selena Quintanilla to map how the poet’s queer Black girlhood was molded by their memory.

With tender reverence, powell meditates on the deaths of her own beloveds while considering the multiple stages, both in private life and performance, that compose the fullness of a starlet’s legacy. How did these women challenge conventional representations of Black femininity and friendship, and forever transform the musical landscape? How did they navigate scrutiny and alienation in the limelight, often in the same industry as their abusers? How were their lives and deaths mythologized by those who survived them, and how do these archives establish afterlives of queer femme possibility?

Through sensual imagery, speculative verse, and splendid wordplay, Dead Girl Cameo takes us beyond the headlines, innovating a Black feminist poetic that traverses the richly-textured realms of grief, girlhood, love, widowing, femme friendship, and queer fandom.