Cry Perfume

By Sadie Dupuis

Lyrical poems that engage with grief and loss and the toll of overdose and addiction with an activist bent.

The title of Cry Perfume is an imperative to bottle sorrow in a beautiful vessel and shed the chemicals that cloud your sight. Written over a four-year period on tour and after losing loved ones and peers to overdose, Dupuis funneled complicated grief into harm reduction advocacy, working to fundraise for and distribute overdose prevention resources in venues internationally.

The slick performativity of pop, punk humor, electronic glitch and sampling, and the surprising leaps of improvisation influence these poems, but beyond music, these poems are informed by Dupuis’s larger concerns about justice and organizing. Cry Perfume is a hopeful but realistic inventory of the virtues and evils that emerge when arts and tech collide. Those dualities are cloaked in the same sparkling fragrance, and there are twinned pleasures and regrets in parting the smokescreen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Ocean
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781939568700

Sadie Dupuis

Sadie Dupuis is the guitarist, songwriter, and singer for the rock band Speedy Ortiz, as well as the producer and multi-instrumentalist behind pop project Sad13. She heads the record label Wax Nine, edits its poetry journal, and is the author of Mouthguard. She lives in Philadelphia.

Book preview

Cry PerfumeHalfPageTitlePageSpace

Copyright © 2022 by Sadie Dupuis

All rights reserved.

To reprint, reproduce, or transmit electronically, or by recording all or part of this manuscript, beyond brief reviews or educational purposes, please send a written request to the publisher at:

Black Ocean

P.O. Box 52030

Boston, MA 02205

blackocean.org

Cover Art and Design by Julian Montague

Book Design by Anuj Mathur

ISBN: 978-1-939568-70-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022933042

The text of Cry Perfume is set in Filson Pro and Goudy Old Style. Earlier versions of some of these poems were first published in Blush Lit, Folkadelphia, Ghost Proposal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hobart Pulp, Midst, Mutiny!, New South, On Loan from the Cosmos, Voicemail Poems, and Yes Poetry.

FIRST EDITION

Contents

BLACK NUMBER

Fake Blood on a Fake Fur Coat

Parking for the Funeral

Crystal Thinking

Chateau Marmont but for Free

Shout Out to My Hex

White Diamond

Outreach from an Open Window

Come Over Make Mac and Cheese :)

Star Wars Is for Me

Your Shirt Still Smells Like You

Palindrome Day

Hi It’s Sad

Hold Presser

Screamer

Don’t Say a Word

Steal My Sunshine

VIOLET NOISE

There’s No American Beach You Like

Crack My Back

View-Master Classic

Oh God I Just Watched a Man

Most Beautiful Snail of Disneyland

Anaheim Without Sun

The Lance Goes Through

Limerance

Bowling a 666

Names Changed

Ten Minute Set Time

And This Man Doesn’t Want to Make Music With Me

May the Bodysnatch Kick In

My Saturnalia

GREEN SPELL

My Pretty Poet

One Site Posts to the Other

Lol

Translation Own

Freefall Through a Black Hole

I Tried All the Free Trials

Horse Haven Road

The Third Place

Figure Four

First Time Caller

Watching Streaming With My Married Friends

Invoicing

Asdfghjkl

Congenital Sunburn

Eric

The Great Outdoer

Cats Was Not Realistic

Remarkable Pig

Hot to Death

Are You Dealing With More Stress

RED ARSENIC

Codeine Ruse

I’m So Tired by The Beatles

Beta Blocker

Nobody Strength

Satan’s Birthday

Same Name Head Wound

Girl Who Ignores Me

Opening Ceremony Closing

Your Microdose

Letter to My Acolyte

Brain Shank

I Think You Just Called Me

Thanking the Clouds

Nah

Bulldog Me in Salted Water

Weird Touch I Spat as She Spidered

BLUE HOUR

Full Worm Moon

Infernal Catalog

Last Night Was My Night

Getaway Car With a Billionaire

Smart Enough to Play Along

Eucalyptus Paycheck

Yes Tears Left to Cry

Fuck No to All That

Be My Valentine II

Train Trundling, Hares Nickering

Oh My God Shoes

Hostage