Megan Fox Exorcizes…a Lot of Demons in New Poetry Book

Reactions to Fox’s book (which haven’t exactly been kind) might remind you of that era online, too. If you weren’t there, it was a moment met by millennial teens and tweens keen on creative expression and, like me, chronicling their every thought from corny (open letters to easily identifiable unrequited loves) to cataclysmic (odes glorifying eating disorders and mean men). As a result, cries for help were often the point of entry for what every person overwhelmed by their feelings wants: human connection. Here, Fox seems as if she’s asking for that same compassion. To the average adult, the delivery might seem silly in that it occasionally airs on the side of melodrama. But that doesn’t mean each word shouldn’t be taken seriously.

In “fucked-up fairy tales” Fox describes a “violent boy, full of rage and insecurities” with “beautiful hands” who often cause her harm. “I wonder what you’re thinking when I cry and tell you to stop,” she writes. Then, she laments a love that “leaves bloodstains” on her sheets in “it’s giving patrick bateman.” Sadism, it seems, is a theme for Fox, who goes on to liken a relationship to repeated murder in “4:46am:” “How many times have you watched me die and still you don’t realize that you are the reaper?”

Frankly, much of Fox’s poems beg concern—and further scrutiny—for the health of her relationship with Baker. There are a few apparent allusions to her fiancé. In fact, allusions might be too benign a word. Many a verse seems punctuated by a warning bell.

“there he stands. tall, thin, twisted. like a tree you’d find in sleepy hollow/ refusing to grow toward the light,” Fox writes in “pretty boys are poisonous.” And in “a 32-year-old narcissist quantifies his crime…” she describes a remorseful man who’s caused her harm: “you keep telling me it was an accident/that you’d never hurt me on purpose.” Bear in mind that Baker, now 33, turned 32 while in a relationship with Fox. In case that wasn’t obvious enough, there’s also a poem entitled, “A 6’4 damsel in distress.” (Baker is very notably 6’4″.) Finally, there’s “to marry an arsonist,” in which Fox reflects on the “many secrets” behind a lover’s “scorched earth temper.” She confirmed to Good Morning America that Baker was the subject.

In “don’t worry darling,” Fox describes wearing a sweatshirt to hide bruises inflicted by a partner who’d been “abandoned” by his parents and didn’t know how to “control” his passions. Again, a reader is left to contemplate who the subject might be. Baker? Or another lover? Is the title a nod to Shia Laboeuf, her Transformers co-star, which Fox recently confirmed she had a romantic relationship with? The actor was the former lead of Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling, and has faced a number of public allegations of abuse from his ex-girlfriend, F.K.A. Twigs. Fox has yet to name names, instead telling GMA: “I’ve only been publicly connected to a few people that I shared energy with, I guess we could say, who were her horrific people and also very famous people,” she said. “But no one knows that I was involved with those people.”

The book isn’t entirely about men’s harms, of course. Fox also includes meditations on motherhood (“One Hour At A Time”), a devastating miscarriage (“i” and “ii”), and a modern take on Romeo and Juliet (“i would die for y— oh, j/k lol”). At times, she’s darkly funny—whether intentioned or not. In “7, the number of completion” Fox literally repeats “I hate men” seven times, and later in the book, in “why i wish i was gay,” she proceeds to list a number of positive adjectives and tells readers it doesn’t matter if a person is any one of those things—if they’re dating a man, they’ll inevitably be taken for granted. This is yet another theme that Fox explores in “serpent,” wherein she wonders if the original sin was actually just Adam’s neglect of Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Personally, I’m happy for all the angsty teens of today that might treat Pretty Boys Are Poisonous as sacred text. Hell, I’m certain I would’ve. But I also hope it spawns discussion in readers’ lives—Fox’s too—about unhealthy relationships, all of the harms women endure but shouldn’t have to, and the many manifestations of abuse.

It comes as no surprise that Fox dedicated the book to anyone who has a hard time believing they deserve to be heard, but it should be striking that she–the paradigm of a whole host of privileges–included herself in that, too. “This book is also for me,” she writes, “because fuck, I deserve better.”

No shit. I hope her words resonate with her, too.