Chapter 15: poem after realizing no one talks about Lululemon murder
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The poem begins by rejecting the domestic role of being a girlfriend, instead expressing a wish to be a student of English literature wandering home late and drunk in autumn. The speaker then admits to being a terrible roommate who does not recycle, reinforcing a self-deprecating, careless persona. Midway through, the poem shifts to a concrete physical scene: the speaker dry-swallows her birth control pill while riding a Citi Bike up the Williamsburg Bridge. This mundane, slightly uncomfortable action leads to the final line, where she declares, “I guess I am the voice of my generation.” The poem’s title—about a Lululemon employee who murdered her coworker, an event rarely discussed—hovers outside the poem’s text, creating an ironic tension between the light personal narrative and the buried violence. The work uses these elements to interrogate identity, performance, and the selective cultural memory of tragedy.
Key Events
- The speaker refuses the label of “girlfriend” and instead claims the identity of an English literature student.
- She confesses to being a negligent roommate who does not recycle.
- She dry-swallows her birth control pill while cycling over the Williamsburg Bridge.
- She proclaims, in a tone that mixes irony and self-mockery, that she must be the voice of her generation.
- The title of the chapter introduces the unmentioned murder of a coworker by a Lululemon employee, grounding the poem in a real, largely forgotten violent event.
Character Development
The poem features a single character: the speaker, a persona closely aligned with the author. This speaker is marked by fragmentation and contradiction. She rejects conventional romantic roles yet craves the romantic image of a literature student stumbling home in the autumn. She admits to being a poor roommate, establishing a pattern of flawed, unapologetic behavior. The act of dry-swallowing birth control reveals a body that is both managed and disregarded—a woman navigating modern reproductive expectations without ceremony. Her final self-proclamation as “the voice of my generation” is a moment of simultaneous grandiosity and self-deprecation. The speaker’s character is therefore an exploration of how contemporary women perform identity, oscillating between vulnerability and bravado, public confession and private rebellion.
Themes, Symbols, and Motifs
Modern female identity is the central theme. The speaker’s rejection of the girlfriend label and her embrace of the literature student archetype both point to a desire for intellectual and romantic freedom that defies domesticity. The birth control pill functions as a symbol of reproductive agency and bodily regulation, yet the act of dry-swallowing it suggests discomfort and a refusal to treat the body with care. The Williamsburg Bridge and Citi Bike evoke urban life and the pressures of constant movement in a modern city. The murder reference in the title acts as a motif for societal amnesia—the way shocking violence is quickly forgotten or subsumed into daily chatter. The poem’s ironic tone throughout serves as a motif for the performance of authenticity, where the speaker’s confessions may be both sincere and staged.
Why This Chapter Matters
This short poem crystallizes many of the collection’s central concerns: the tension between public and private self, the use of dark humor to process trauma, and the critique of a culture that overlooks violence. The chapter title is a quintessentially postmodern gesture—it invokes a real, specific tragedy without incorporating it into the verse, forcing the reader to ask why that murder was so quickly forgotten while the speaker’s trivial actions are given literary voice. The poem demonstrates Cohen’s ability to weave serious commentary into playful, confessional verse. It also shows her skill at using mundane physicality (dry-swallowing a pill, biking) to ground abstract reflections. For students of contemporary poetry, this chapter offers a compact case study in how irony can be used to tackle weighty subjects without veering into earnestness.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the poem’s title relate to its content, and what effect does that relationship create?
The title recounts a real murder—a Lululemon employee killing her coworker—that the poem itself never references. This disconnect creates a jarring irony: the personal, trivial observations of the speaker contrast sharply with the unspoken violence. The effect is to critique how easily society forgets traumatic events while obsessing over mundane personal narratives. The title haunts the poem without belonging to it.
2. What does the act of dry-swallowing birth control while biking suggest about the speaker’s relationship with her own body?
Dry-swallowing a pill is uncomfortable and physically demanding, especially while riding a bike. It suggests that the speaker treats her body instrumentally, as something to be managed rather than nurtured. The birth control pill symbolizes reproductive control, but the casual, almost reckless way she takes it implies a rebellion against the rituals of self-care. The scene underscores her performative disregard for comfort and convention.
3. Why does the speaker conclude “I guess I am the voice of my generation,” and how should readers interpret this line?
The line is delivered after a series of self-deprecating admissions (bad roommate, awkward pill-taking, drunk wandering). It reads as a sarcastic self-coronation, mocking the idea that any individual can authentically represent an entire generation. The speaker’s guesswork (“I guess”) undercuts any claim to authority. Readers should interpret it as a critique of the pressure placed on young women to be iconic or representative, while highlighting the absurdity of such a claim from someone so casually flawed.