Dear Mothership: Poems

From the author of Maybe the Saddest Thing and Silencer comes a playful yet profound poetry collection that orbits the intersections of public loss, private grief, (dis)connection, capitalism, and identity. In Dear Mothership, Marcus Wicker channels the lyrical dexterity of Outkast and the speculative vision of poet Robert Hayden to chart a course through personal and political upheaval. The collection’s centerpiece is the “Break Beat Crown”—Wicker’s original take on the heroic crown of sonnets—presented as a travelogue from an extraterrestrial who has touched down in modern-day Atlanta. Across linked poems, the outsider records field notes on pandemic discord, isolation, tenderness, late-stage capitalism, empathy, and art. The longer the speaker inhabits a dysfunctional society, the more alien he feels. In addition to these science fictional experiments, Wicker delivers affecting, personal poems grounded in lived experience: lingering grief over two miscarriages, the sudden death of a friend, a sustained search for joy on the other side of those heartbreaks. With its singular imagination, Dear Mothership kindles a new understanding of what makes us most human.