Lockers are for Bearcats Only by Mallory Tater (Palimpsest Press 2026)

     The title of Mallory Tater's compelling collection at first seems surreal, but as one begins to read the first section it becomes clear that, rather than being an Ovidian fantasia, the title is merely a sign, declaring exclusionary zones in the swimming pool, places to store things that serve only set teams, not random individuals, who must, instead, use cumbersome and itinerant Rubbermaids. This twist underlies the tone of the three part book, one dealing with grief, both in the pool and out, along with the shaping formations of existence, from family to religion. 

    The fifteen-segment long poem in varying lineations that begins the collection takes place in and around chlorinated water. As part seven states: "I started swimming when my friend died/because it's hard to think in a line/underwater." Regular swims become a way to both honour and detach from mourning, while addressing the self whose "thighs are always kissing" and who doesn't belong to the Bearcats team, though it remembers being in competitive sports, being yelled at to kick the opposing teams' "butts to Pizza Hut" and wondering why it all wasn't enough of a palliation. Now swimming serves in a deeper way, though the yearning to have a simpler innocence simmers still. At the close when Tater chants the anaphora of "I drag the Rubbermaid" the resonances of a spirit's baggage lingers. 

   The second part, couched in mostly slender lyrics, are elegies for her deceased friend Cora, beginning with memories of their living bond and moving painfully towards her loss and Tater's ways of dealing with the grief, beyond the practice of swimming. Although some lyrics are super slight and seem a tad too self-referential in detail, others are powerful with somatic largesse, depicting Cora as someone who would "fry us midnight eggs/and softened tomatoes/ over her stove" ("Cora Hates Roller Coasters"), who loved so much her heart "turned to ketchup at the Zeller's Diner" ("Ketchup Heart"). The piece that struck me hardest, given my own experience with mourning was "Anthropomorphizing is Normal Right?" where she transforms her dead friend into a branch outside her window that "shifts, tilts, nods/its chin as if it has/ your chin" and she asks it, "do you even like this grief anymore?" 

    Then a childhood of Catholicism, eating disorders, and familial rituals rears up in the final section. A priest says, "You have a big tongue" ("First Communion"), barfed-up Cheetos are stuffed down a drain ("Bulimia is still Hard to Write about"), doves are smashed by envisioned tornadoes. Allusions to St Blaise, the Fasting Girls, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Twilight and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants lace through these at times too-quickly-wrapped-up pieces that can fall fast into flat closures like "I was wrong and I am sorry" ("Thigh Gap, Early Anorexia Recovery"). Emotional potency is usually present and yet could increase its leashing through fiercer attention to line breaks, stanza shifts, the sounds of words.  Overall, if you are seeking a dive into the tangibilities of being a young woman engaging both stranger and common ranges of feeling read Lockers are for Bearcats Only. Most importantly, it emphasizes the enduring value of female bonds. Tater writes, so beautifully, in "We Daughters Suck Blueberries on the Edge of Alouette Road, 1996" that she will "stay in this memory for women I love."  




    



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