Main Street Rag Publishing

55 pages/$14.00

In Heather McNaugher’s debut collection of poems, System of Hideouts, readers are treated to intellectual gusto, personal gutsiness, and aching tenderness.  The collection covers a broad range of experience—childhood, familial, and sexual—in interrogating the construction of self identity, producing a collection of moving poems emboldened by emotional verve.

McNaugher’s most stunning poetic trait materializes through her unabashed honesty.  These poems pilfer the experiences that many people keep silent about: from first lovers to first menstrual cycles to familial homophobia, McNaugher weaves her way through the secrets hidden deep within us, plucking them from our bodies for close self exploration.  In “Max,” the speaker reflects on her first friend, who she unashamedly reveals had “the first family I’d hate.”  She recalls suffocating goldfish and placing bets about cartoons, which Max always won.  The speaker makes meaning out of this young memory:

“From this I developed my first self-defeating theory
of luck—boys have it; I don’t.  It occurs to me only now
that a glossy T.V. Guide arrived each week at your door.
At my door was a woman on drugs.”
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