Why I Bite, by Cathrina Jakeman

Prose, poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Why I Bite is a visceral, fragmented exploration of girlhood, illness, and rage. Written in experimental prose, Cathrina Jakeman’s debut chapbook gnaws at the liminal space between the body and memory, the personal and the performative. Moving through medical language, surreal metaphor, and dreamlike vignettes, these pieces examine what it means to live in a body that hurts, and remembers. Whether charting inherited trauma through the lens of a shark’s open mouth or dissecting femininity as something both aesthetic and grotesque, Jakeman refuses to make herself digestible.

At once a call to the void and a confession, Why I Bite is a coming-of-age narrative that refuses resolution. Through sections that span lyric essays, prose poems, and experimental hybrids, Jakeman builds a collection that is both intimate and mythic in scale. This is a book about thresholds, between pain and power, softness and silence. It is not a healing narrative. It is a survival document written in teeth marks.

Cathrina Jakeman is a Colorado-based reader and writer, currently earning her degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. She is a staff writer for The Lycian Magazine, and her work can be found in The Afterpast Review. She lives full-time in a liminal space between half-read books, open Google Docs, and clocking out of her restaurant job to logging in as a writer. Her writing is grounded in lyricism, girlhood, grotesquerie, and a bit of decay. Cathrina believes in the essay as séance, in bad art as sacred, and in loving the work. She is powered by energy drinks and her black cat named Henry (aka Henerd, Hernardo, Henny, Hennedy Pennedy).