The Last Girl by M.R. Mandell

In some sense, the title of M.R. Mandell’s staggeringly beautiful new chapook, The Last Girl, is a misnomer. The girls and women in these poems aren’t last, rather, they’re too often discarded, neglected, or abused, whether by absent fathers, creepy men driving home teenage babysitters, or mothers dying too early. Yet, though much is lost, these girls prove as resilient and powerful as the language Mandell uses to describe them, telling us even the moon and the stars “are afraid of her rage.” With The Last Girl, Mandell offers us both a crystal-clear window into the continual plague of misogyny, but also a gift, one with which to celebrate all of our daughters and sisters.

–François Bereaud, author of San Diego Stories

In The Last Girl, M.R. Mandell paints the battlegrounds of her family’s past with brutal honesty and the wry humor of a survivor, Nothing’s varnished: a loving mother is dumped into a mental hospital, the family uses newspapers for toilet paper, a sister closes the lid on her “big brother’s” casket. With childlike vulnerability reminiscent of J.D. Salinger, Mandell fills her poems with snow globes and tight Calvin Klein Jeans, and the ever-fresh surprise of ordinary grown-up happiness. The Last Girl is a sweet testimony of resilience.

–Carla Sarett, author of She Has Visions and My Family Was Like a Russian Novel

With a deft eye for detail, M.R. Mandell explores what it means to be female, daughter, sister, self. The Last Girl does not shy away from the tension that arises from what we remember, what we keep, and what we leave behind.

–Leanne Shirtliffe, poet and author