She springs up, goes to her page, and sees hardly any fans left. The next session has started, but there is no one left in the waiting room. The ones who stay spit insults. She reads them, feels hurt, so she gets no pleasure from it.

You looked exactly like you do now except you were wearing glasses and you looked distracted.

Charm cripples our capacity for effective criticism, our will to demand change.

People in Utah spoke about modesty constantly

Literary agent

Never had one. I don't know any of their names.

I drew different flowers on my skin using my brother’s scout knife like a brush, stroking my body into a life-sized artwork of unbearable physical and emotional damage.

Diabetic Ketoacidosis and Camus 

There is no flight from light, no  
solution to the absurd, when  
through the ghost we are revived— 
the shiny little sun-stars seeing out 
like a

Joseph was my internship advisor at a public access TV station in Berkeley

This party is great, Maria, it’s really something special. You said this to our host as if she were our friend. Really, we’d known Maria for fifteen minutes and you already wanted to get into bed with her. You wanted a ménage à trois. This sounded stupid and French, but I wanted to get in bed with her too. Though my version of events wouldn’t involve you.

I felt pitiful writing.

            On the rare occasion that I left the house – to buy Heinz ravioli and oranges for myself

What distances between / Intent and flesh, a life / Beyond each brazen vow: / If only swords could be drawn / Against every problem

“Quality takes money,” she said.

Dancing had always been my weapon. I don’t let myself think.

It feels weird knowing that my parents stalk my art website as a way of seeing what I’m up to. It’s one thing to be naked in front of strangers… but to be naked in front of my parents…

The sun is citrus— / orange ruptured guts / emblazoning / a golden Buddha / reclining among macaques 

The Kratom store felt like a doctor's office. A guy in a white shirt and jeans next to a slumped woman attended to us.

5. you are paralyzed like a deer in the middle of the road / a car is / a. hurtling towards you at full speed / b. disappearing into the distance

Without gloves, the nurse injected me and stuck the bloody needle into the bed.

The first night I slept with R, he took Viagra and Adderall. He treated me to the sex marathon of my dreams and instantly cemented himself as the man at the top of my roster.

I took a 10mg edible and brushed my teeth in the bathroom at LAX that evening.

But most of all, I want to shove my head beneath the depths of any river, to gargle on the bubbles, because I want to swallow the sky when any sun is visible through the drowning.

I was sick for four months, but it was not the kind of sick I was used to: it was a numbing contagion. Under darkened skies, I coughed up the particles of illness. I looked at the walls

But we barely make it out of his sight and into the room before Xi’s on her back with her one leg up, foot on the concrete wall, both arms out straight, hands on my chest, holding me off.

Imagine a young honeymooning couple on their way to Polynesia, the husband’s forgotten his John le Carré on the train home from work: well no matter, here’s the novelization of Sorcerer to tide him over on a fourteen-hour flight, a portable cinematic experience in prose.

When you think of birds of prey, you probably don’t think of a Shrike. Unless you’re really into birds