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.
