(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Netgalley.)

Turn Your OCD Rituals into Spells

Your therapist says it’s magical thinking, so you drive for miles under sun-splintered sky and flick the windshield wipers on, off, on,
thirty times. This is your rain dance. Now the crops may grow. [...]
To curse someone, arrange all
the clothing you own in groups of four. The Book of Shadows in your mind says this will make the person barren.
Check your temperature. Pray to the Goddess of Corn. Arrange all your other possessions in groups of four too, and chant so the demon that’s really doing the chanting finally leaves you alone. Light four candles. Click the bathroom latch. Magical thinking is only for the serious witch.

***

iii. Alternate Timelines

The Best Version

The boy they thought would shoot up the church had only a Nerf gun: foamdarted the pastor and the pale-blue pastor’s wife, and split.
In the kitchen, you find your mom got up early this morning,
made pralines to share with all of her
kids, baked a criss-crossed pie for you
in seven different layers of flavour. Each one is more your favourite than the last.
Everyone understands the nuances of identity as hopscotch, a Rubik’s cube, elementary math. As always you get a ride to school from Jenna’s Dad’s rainbow carpool unicorn, Samantha,
but today when Samantha drops you off, you lose your grip on her slippery, manyhued tail and hit asphalt hard, skin your ever-nuanced knee.
In every timeline there is asphalt, asphalt, and in every one the knee-hurt is both real and unreal.

***

Some water for the dumpster fire in your head.

***

If the cover hadn't already sold me on YOUR THERAPIST SAYS IT'S MAGICAL THINKING: POEMS, the title certainly would have. This is collection that's every bit as colorful and weird as its cover promises. YOUR THERAPIST is comprised of three parts which, while distinct, blend well together. Mostly.

Part 1, "Coping Strategies," features pieces inspired by actual self-care advice the author has received - all of it cringe ("choose to be different than you are"), some of it downright contradictory ("don't think about death" / "think about death"). It's from the beguiling "Turn Your OCD Rituals into Spells" that the book's title is derived. Anyone who's dealt with mental illness will find solace and humor in "Coping Strategies."

The collection kind of falters a bit in the second act. "Surrey Girls" is "based on the photographs of Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond, a psychiatrist and pioneering photographer at England’s Surrey County Asylum in the mid-1800s, who believed photography had a role to play in mentally ill patients’ treatment." McCarney channels the POV of four patients who might have undergone this sort of therapy.

While it's certainly a fascinating idea, its execution feels incomplete. For example, each poem is preceded by the heading "1," suggesting more to come - and yet nothing ever does. McCarney just conveys the patients' thoughts leading up to the first photograph - but doesn't track the patients, or their treatment, long-term. I was a bit dumbfounded when this section ended without any sort of follow-up or denouement.

Part 3, "Alternative Timelines," seems to flow more seamlessly from Part 1. It's just what it sounds like: McCarney imagines different 'verses, some of them better ("The Best Version"), most of them even worse than our current shared dumpster fire (if you can believe it). This is an especially fantastical assortment; I could see these poems being adapted into an anthology series, maybe even an animated one. (Think: ADVENTURE TIME.)

***

Table of Contents

i. Coping Strategies
1 Let It Out
2 Take Supplements
3 Turn Your OCD Rituals into Spells
4 Do Your Fucking Breathing Exercises
6 Do The Sex
7 Take Your Meds
9 Act
10 Be the Change
11 Actually Talk During Your Scheduled Talk Therapy
12 Sleep It Off
13 Don’t Think about Death
14 Think about Death
16 Turn Your Pain into Art
17 Drink
18 Choose to Be Different than You Are
19 Take Comfort in Material Things
20 Revisit Your Childhood Trauma

22 ii. Surrey Girls
23 Lucinda
24 Mary Ann
28 Caroline
32 Bea

36 iii. Alternate Timelines
41 The Best Version
42 Conveniences
43 Republic 2
44 Tale of the Phoenix
46 The Cave
48 A Less Good Version
50 Negatives
51 Alt-Everything
53 Tale of the Grocer
54 A Labourer at Stonehenge
56 The Cleanse
58 Fast Food Breakfast
60 Victimology, Redux
61 The Great Reign
63 Gridlock
65 Happy
67 Tale of the Flood
68 Back, Back

69 Acknowledgements ( )