Previously on...
Part 2 || Part 1 || Prologue
salat to define the terms of ritual
[adhan]
A calling, a culling, a billowing
minaret banner, a cigarette starter thrown
out a moving car window to prove a point.
"with sky as ceiling, / ground as home, / we can call the stranger / lover / and the earth / ours / at least for a little while."
I dreamed we were in a department store trying to buy you shoes.
This was months ago. April, maybe May. The weather was foggy. So was my brain. I saw you again in the Cubism section. I was standing in front of “The Actor” by Picasso. The second I saw you, I smiled
Take a percocet at around 4:30pm.
Eat a large weed cookie, drink 1 750ml can of beer and then 3 pints between 6:30pm and 10:00pm.
"You won’t let me love you, so I am loving this plant,” he says.
People used to tell my father they looked alike, he and Bruce, and I suppose it was true.
Betty's son Jonah is convulsing in the kitchen and there are fifty ways he could die.
My Brother’s Two Screams
I heard two screams from my bedroom. Outside,
my brother had killed his best friend. That day
the clouds stayed put. The trees swayed under
gentle winds, but not
NAME LIKE A GIRL
I am a girl named older. I get in the way
of my own sleeping. Not being average
like that house, full of triangular
objects, where I only know two
animals, a fish and a
I tried to write a warning
in chaste trees and pumpkin vines:
the worst men of our lives will return
to us in more ways than one.
Preordained,
You preheat your oven to 425°F before measuring out two and one third cups of self-rising flour into a glass Pyrex bowl. White Lily is the best though it can be hard to find outside of the south and is worth tracking down. It’s milled from a soft winter wheat, and with it your biscuits puff up into soft, light pillows that literally melt in your mouth.
here is my chest here is where I remember longing has not visited me in a long time longing who I let inside me longing who I let cut my hair with old scissors longing who feels my feet swell and
for virginia
I threw in an extra fuck because it’s spring
I threw in an extra fuck because the long before is here
I threw in an extra fuck because the riveting scene is
"He’s trying to tell you that he’s cool,” Jay said. “He’d probably buy us beer.”
Every twenty-something in Los Angeles has a comedian friend. In late winter, mine invited me to his show in Culver City with a foolproof pitch: no cover, no drink minimum, nearby parking.
Ghosts remove fishhooks from animal bodies
in the desolation outside an empty house.
Somewhere between a fortress & forest
cicadas shed skin & leave exoskeletons
on tree barks.
There’s no room that’s mine. This thought occurred to me plenty as a child, but it was a fact without any emotion attached. I think about it especially when I watch house hunting shows: what a wish list looks like for people who get to choose where they live on purpose.
The first time a boy accidently touches your leg you are fourteen—
i don't know how to manage time
the same way i manage my
body
away from men
and their hands and their will and their need
to take me when i'm choosing eggs, when i'm walking
to the bus,
I had anted up already: pics in the too-small bikini top he liked, back arched in his favorite Brazilian-cut bottoms. Did you just take these for me? he asked. By your mid-30s, romance is infinite regress. Or infinite repeat. Or just infinite, like Groundhog Day, or samsara. I don’t reuse sexts! I replied. This is romantic. We understand this is romantic. It is, in fact, romantic to take pictures just for him.
The predominant inquisitor of women accused of witchcraft, it is theorized, was a sadist with acousticophilia: a fetishist aroused by the infliction of pain, humiliation and their associated
