From Blamage
BB002: Douglas Payne “Every Girl Has Nightmares” 52 pages, perfect bound.
“ Douglas Payne's "Every Girl Has Nightmares" is a Valentine to all the dead dears. Ones that have been metaphorically canonized like Shasta Groene and others like Jessica and Stephanie whom we can only ever guess their last thoughts and terrors. Payne explores their worlds through the eyes of their destroyers, family members, bystanders and most delicately, the girls themselves. He captures what nearly every female is inundated with since they are extremely young...that it is a distinct possibility that they will experience a living nightmare by the hands of a man. In these worlds Payne explores the eternal documentation of abuse and how trauma transposes these little flowers that are squashed. There is a line that broke my heart. Payne wrote, "How if you told him you wanted to stop you might not mean anything anymore" which so perfectly encapsulates the feeling of objectification, possession and the act of being dismantled. There are also striking lines in Payne's poems that claw and tear at survival where it feels like he is forcibly prying open the petal's of a still tight rose to demand that we see his beauty. This book presents you with both the petals and the thorns...a reminder that we are alive with our pain. Payne leaves it up to you if you want to embrace these feelings or be memorialized with the rest of the ghosts.”
-Nicole Blaje (Men Who Memorize ‘zine, Rococo Records)