Dead Girl Cameo

A Love Song in Poems

De: m. mick powell

Narrado por: m. mick powell

A dazzling docupoetic debut collection interweaving personal loss with the life stories of Aaliyah Haughton, Whitney Houston, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Phyllis Hyman, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, and others to explore sexuality, survival, queer mourning, and the afterlives of stardom

“I made, of my bones, an earth for you: turned the oceans
your favorite shade of light, that deepened, nearly bruised
dusk. Reflected in my palms, what I’ve made into water
glows amethyst”

In m. mick powell’s polyphonic, haunting debut, a chorus of voices conjures up intimate pop herstories to map how the poet’s queer Black girlhood was molded by their memory. With tender reverence, powell meditates on the deaths of her own beloveds while reflecting on the many stages of an icon’s life: How did these women challenge conventional representations of Black femininity and transform the musical landscape? How did they navigate abuse and alienation in the limelight? How do the mythologies that survive them establish afterlives of queer femme possibility?

Through sensual imagery, speculative verse, and splendid wordplay, Dead Girl Cameo takes us beyond the headlines, innovating a Black feminist poetic that traverses the richly textured realms of grief, girlhood, love, widowing, femme friendship, and queer fandom.

©2025 m. mick powell (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Dead Girl Cameo is not only an interrogation of the way society and celebrity culture fails girls, particularly those who are Black and queer; it is also a generous imagining of the lives that are possible when girlhood is protected and tended to. powell’s incisive use of persona and form force the reader to reconsider our perceptions of icons such as Whitney Houston, Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, and Billie Holiday, while her evocative lyric asks us to examine our own longings, desires, friendships, and relationship to intimacy.”—Brittany Rogers, author of Good Dress

“‘I wanted to resurrect the girl,’ writes m. mick powell in the introduction to this wonderfully collaged collection of elegies and found text. The poems that unfold are formally vast, ranging from abecedarian to contrapuntal to cento, studded with perfect little jewels of looking, of feeling, of deep knowing. These poems haunt, and celebrate, and mourn, and, to borrow the poet’s own language, invent ‘other words for gold.’ I adore this book, and I look forward to seeing its work in the world.”—Safia Elhillo, author of Girls That Never Die

“An orchestra of tenderness marks the brilliance of this book. mick is a star.”—Camonghne Felix, author of Dyscalculia