Your fingers fumble with the seatbelt’s metal latch. You say you don’t feel safe. That safety is a bigger lie than Jesus.

You breathe and scream so deep, underwater it sounds like song. 

Someone else is waiting by the door. I’m brushing dust off my jacket getting over to her, but really looking at my hand, which hasn’t stopped shaking in the past minute. I think I’m excited.

An excerpt from WASTE: a novel

Elvira Moon loved bowling. For four straight years, her team, the Blooming Broads, dominated the women’s league, decimating all opponents until Big Tina quit to start her own team, the South Side Splitters, with that bitch Claudia from Couscous or whatever country she’d arrived from in a banana crate. 

[Previously on... Part 5 :: Part 4 :: Part 3 :: Part 2 :: Part 1]

Last time the notorious cats have tricked dogkind who sent its army on a wild goose chase to the cat's old planet, Cot neep,

She gave my dog lighter fluid.

She said my dog didn’t drink it because she put it there.

The dog drank it because it was an accident.

A wedding is coming
up, and it’s mine

Whenever Amanda and I get into a fight she calls me poor. She tells me that, in my country, they sell nappy-headed dark skin girls like me for 20 silver coins and a healthy goat. 

½ cup (one stick) of unsalted butter (higher quality butter = better tasting cannabutter)

¼ ounce of weed, VERY finely ground

I noticed a tall man in front of me with a long umbrella hanging from his arm. He was watching the priest and listening. When we began the preparations for communion, the tall man threw himself onto his knees. 

I never call ahead to say I'm in town and on the way over because the front door is always unlocked. 

Look at those fucking crows, Mona said.  She and Dan and I were sitting on our porch, drinking vodka tonics and staring at the view, which was pretty good with the sun going down and the corn in the field between our two houses almost ripe and ready to harvest. 

Every time I walk to the library
I pass my old friend’s house
who doesn’t live there,
or anywhere anymore.

He was riding down the street like you, contramano, and the image came of you on your bike, and I wished for the dream of the flying bicycle to return, the one where I find you again. 

1.

Not long after my father died, my mother bought a brand-new bright-red Toyota Celica GT. She also started exercising regularly—a mile a day in the pool—and spent more time shopping for

My friend, she wants to win a man over with a story. “He loves to read,” she says, “and I want to impress him. Could you write me something?”

Once a year I decide
I don't love you. It's

today. Watch me
not make you breakfast.

The child is only
this flesh I grew

and you tore 
out of me.

Now it stirs in the

I've seen my friend Taylor sleeping
mouth open sometimes, one time with a boner

Whenever I've awoken him, he has
acknowledged my presence immediately

and put his hand in the

When Sophie arrived home from the Strange Charm concert, she realized she was now in possession of an uncomfortable secret. The next day at work it replayed in her mind at least a hundred times. 

To love is to understand
the tsunami--

that it's just a thing the sea does
when it's been too long

missing the

After the funeral, Dakota drove straight to the airport; there was nowhere else to go. Her brother was the only remaining soul in the Rocky Mountains she’d known.

[Previously on... Part 7  |  Part 6  |  Part 5  |  Part 4  |  Part 3  |  Part 2  |  Part 1]

but that's all about to change. My murder ballads, well, they prefer to terrify. I want to talk more about titular heroes. About what it means to kiss a goose. I mean, kill a goose. I want to do

There’s hardly anywhere like Norton’s anymore, and no one like Norton. He sold phrases for special occasions out of a shop in Queens.

My bathroom break is getting ahead of me.