Excerpt from Lockers are for Bearcats Only by Mallory Tater
SUN GONE
With an unnaturally faint heart, I clasp
rooted qualms that match my own:
fears hidden in worn rock,
fears that rest in vertebral gaps.
Cora—she is the tallest.
She climbs in dark, and I write
our names in clay with a thin,
child-legged branch. All the way
up now; the sand and Cora’s legs meld,
grit rains down from her feet
into my open mouth. I wish Cora
would fall, only in dream,
so she won’t feel the rocks,
the enormity of the rocks below
where I stand and speak of things
too faint. If I could see Cora now
I’d see the winding sky has shrunk her,
but we would watch the damp
vectors of mountains.
She would pause in binding worship,
she would pause,
every reef of her bones
would pause.
EARTHQUAKE KIT
I gorge on chickpeas, undrained and stinking,
under the bed, saved for our earthquake kit—
that day, we all anticipate
Vancouver to be ensorcelled by one stoned
and shoulder-chipped God.
Boundary Bay will draw a high fever.
Mount Baker will headache with fear.
We will hide under ourselves,
whisper we should have moved
to Pembroke or Antigonish when we got grants.
Tonight, it’s not that I planned
to eat our cluster of rations—Nature Valley bars,
canned pickerel, homemade fruit leather—
it’s that grief clutched me and would not let
me walk. I could not walk the serpentine
trail down Cambie Street to No Frills
for orange juice and frozen pizza.
I could not walk to Kia Foods
for kale and brown bread.
I can eat grief now. I trim wrappers with scissors,
brine my lips with small, tinned fish,
all those bones, my mouth gnathic in missing you.
I took one of her velour sweaters
from your closet. I wear it often. I did not steal
her Ariana Grande CLOUD perfume
but I sprayed it on my wrists and neck.
I did snap a photo of a photo—her beautiful childhood
self on a toboggan—
gap-toothed, forever-girl, winter
splashed on her cheeks. When we were girls
we’d weave our hair together until we were conjoined,
we’d wear g-strings and tell lies to our moms,
we’d tell lies about ourselves to each other
under the glow of lava and ice fiber lamps,
all because we were bored and breathing.
My survival has become silent—
it’s not legumes, an emergency radio, AA batteries.
I am not afraid of The Big One.
I am not afraid of some drunk God.
I am afraid of what I can do without her.
And how she can’t see me doing it.
Mallory Tater and her poetry collection, Lockers are for Bearcats Only (Palimpest Press, February 15, 2025)
Lockers are for Bearcats Only by Mallory Tater offers poetry that traces the complexities of grief, the importance of destigmatizing dialogue around suicide, and the beauty and complicated core of girlhood friendships while improving our collective understanding of mental health awareness and suicide prevention in an approachable, concrete, and empathetic way.
The poems spill out from the confluence of grief and water. After losing one of her closest friends, the poet began swimming laps—part meditation, part therapy, part escapism—immersed in the depths of the public pool. There, she found herself haunted by the strange tension between fitness / surrender and memory / motion where ghosts of girlhood, catholicism, and addiction rose to the surface.
These themes haunt Lockers Are for Bearcats Only – a tender, unguarded exploration of loss, embodiment, and the currents that carry us through life with and without those who shaped us.
About Mallory Tater:
Mallory Tater is the author of This Will Be Good: Poems (Book*Hug Press, 2018), The Birth Yard: A Novel (HarperCollins, 2020), and Soft Tissue: A Novel (forthcoming, ECW Press, 2027). She was the publisher of Rahila’s Ghost Press, a now-retired chapbook press. Mallory currently lives in Vancouver, where she teaches at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing. Lockers are for Bearcats Only is her second poetry collection.