Description
In thirteen slick, innovative, and gut-wrenching flashes, the young women and girls in Breaking Points, the debut chapbook from Chelsea Stickle, hit the walls around them—walls constructed by family, friends, significant others, and insidious cultural perils. “Stranger danger doesn’t disappear when you start wearing a push-up bra,” notes one of Stickle’s pre-teen narrators when confronted by a leering threat that will forever sever her path from that of her best friend. In “How to Make Stock with Thanksgiving Leftovers,” a queer young woman takes us through a wry recipe for boiling turkey stock and raging against small-minded relatives and the traumas they inflict.
Written in the style of a classic glossy magazine personality quiz, “How Mature Are You?: A Quiz” provides whip-smart A, B, C responses to situations such as: “When that bitch in your book club calls you a space cadet” then furnishes the reader with irreverent, pull-no-punches results. This is a collection as darkly humorous as it is heartbreaking and disquieting. Within Stickle’s thirteen walled worlds, some will break, some adapt, and others soar. Pushed to the breaking point, none escape unscathed.
FROM “COMING OF AGE”
It’s weird seeing her cut off at the waist in a glass box. A mannequin in an upright coffin disguised as an arcade game is always going to be strange, even if there is a crystal ball by her hand. It costs one dollar to hear my fortune. I never play.
We’re not even supposed to be in here—Christina and I, not alone anyway. My older sister Elise is supposed to be watching us, but all she wants to do is sunbathe on a beach towel until she smells like peanut butter. She tells us we can do whatever we want as long as we stay together. We lick cotton candy off our fingers or rig a dollar on some line to fish for rednecks on the pier. When we overheat we hide out in the arcade.
The arcade is one of the few places where there are only other kids, usually all boys, sometimes high schoolers. We’re not old enough to be noticed by boys yet. Elise saunters in and every eye is on her. Christina and I walk in and nobody cares, which is great. I’d be happy avoiding all that for the rest of my life.
© Maureen Porto Photography 
