Working backwards, Mary Karr became a Catholic,
and goes to church with her son. She got sober in AA,
but had trouble with the concept of a higher power.
She fucked David Foster Wallace. (Elizabeth Wurzel
did too.) She got a prestigious teaching job she wanted.
She published Liar's Club and it was a hit.
James Laughlin asked her for a book of poems
and published it. She got divorced. She had
a drinking problem. Toby Woolf's agent asked her
to write a memoir. She won a Whiting Award without
applying for it. She published a book of poems.
She went to graduate school with writers who became famous.
She got a scholarship to college as white-trash outreach.
She was a surfer chick. She smoked a lot of pot.
She grew up in hardscrabble poverty.
Didn't we have fun? her mother said.
She was bright. She was pretty.
She loved her daddy.
She was feisty.