Opening Ceremony - Paperback

by Laura Marie Marciano (Author)

Opening Ceremony is the second collection of poetry from author Laura Marie Marciano. The book follows the speaker of her first book Mall Brat from the 2008 recession to the current hellscape of downward mobility for many aging millennials. Finding absurdity in the Fourth of July, backyard pools, surveillance mirrors, and Sol De Janeiro, the poems navigate the pain and promise of letting go of expectations as one seeks motherhood. Wet landscapes, missed fertile windows, Botox routines, quiet quitting rituals, political centrists, and text message banter are navigated by the author's perfect balance of tenderness, pastiche, camp, and wit. Ultimately, the poems in this book reveal the glimmer that still exists in leaning from a collective state of drowning, into the birth of a child, breaking open our hearts to a soft landing and a queer future.

Back Jacket

"Laura Marie Marciano power-walks into my brain wearing the hottest and milfiest outfit. I imagine her smirking writing poems holding a puffy-pen. I imagine her tickling me with it. Her poems make me want to live. Laura Marie Marciano's poems have been in conversation with my brain for my entire life. She nails "what is most personal is most universal". Some of us need to buy ourselves a treat some days. Glitter for our eyelids, a coke, or thrift bric-a-brac. I bought perfume before reading Opening Ceremony. I read Opening Ceremony at the laundromat and realized I didn't need perfume anymore. I drove back to return and exchanged. Days later, I returned and didn't get anything. Marciano's poetry made me realize I didn't need scent on my body. I needed community. Marciano makes me want to stay alive so I can keep reading her poems for the rest of my life. A true genius. Go read all of her poems right now. Feed your brain. Feel less alone."
-- Ana Carrete, author of Blush and Blink (Lang Books) and Baby Babe (CCM Press).

"These poems are birth pangs. They can't be described as painful exactly. They're overwhelming and can only be comprehended with our animal instincts. In Opening Ceremony Laura Marie Marciano takes us on an amoral journey through class in all its artifice and reality, reflecting inequality and its symptoms with clinical surveillance technology, and at the same time, we're invited to dip in an out of the aquamarine waters of suburban, subterranean comfort with our naked bodies. How do we expand to make room for adulthood and parenthood? How do we contract to hold onto sacred youth and mystery? All the wild, fragrant, flamboyant material of these poems create a jungle in which to explore these questions, with pleasure."
-- Monica McClure, author of The Gone Thing (Winter Editions) and Tender Data (Birds LLC)

"Thank god our Queen of the Mall Brats is back to guide us through our sad economy, our forever adjunct professoring, our the-Juvederm-isn't-working with her shimmering, funny, beautiful, alive poems that make me want to cry and to live, too."
-- Kate Durbin, author of E! Entertainment (Wonder) and

Author Biography

Laura Marie Marciano is an author, educator, and media artist. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College in Performance and Interactive Media Arts, and her PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Rhode Island. Laura's first book of poetry, Mall Brat, was released in 2016, from Civil Coping Mechanism Press. She has curated works of poetry and performance at MoMA PS1, Brooklyn Museum, and RISD Museum, and has given readings at many venues across the nation.