and what’s the point, really, of casual sex, except to melt the ghosts off someone’s face

We slithered up toward the moaning highway and saw it was being tongued by stretched headlights.

When reciting the Ten Plagues in Hebrew, we customarily dip our knives into our wine glass for each plague and set a drop of wine on our dinner plate.

There’s not a thought in the throb. Not an inkling in the coppery clatter of his mouth. There’s only the turn. Only the fist: fast, everything behind it.

She thought he was going to kill her this time, but that was one of the unspoken rules: no killing each other. Also: no kitchen knives, no purpose-built weapons of any kind. No screaming, either. Neighbors, the police—they wouldn’t understand.

My mother’s screams woke me up.

I have come to teach you love / and the solitude that comes / with ultimate strength.

In late July, in the mid-nineties, I begged Mom and her fiancé Paul to buy me a big ball at Roses department store.

Showboat said he'd like to take me out sometime. I asked why.

“Because I think you’re attractive, and so we can hang out somewhere other than the coffee trailer,” he said.

It was October, ten

I'm sure a terrible something has occurred at every inhabitable coordinate. 

I got my period the moment we got to the hotel. Getting my period wasn’t going to affect any of my plans, and was no big deal, really, aside from the fact that I refuse to pay attention to my body so am always completely surprised when my period comes. As such, I had brought no supplies to Miami with me.

in the middle of the night i will sit on your leg on a swivel chair, watching your favorite music videos, galvanizing our similarities. we transport ourselves into the future.

One morning on McSweeney’s there was an announcement about a new literary festival in Philadelphia organized by Neal Pollack. It was going to be called the 215 Festival (named after the city’s area code) and would feature readings by Dave and Zadie and Matthew Klam and Neal, as well as other young, McSweeney’s type writers.

The first time I met Nate he asked if I masturbate.

I want to perform for you, pretend to be good enough for you.

Do we keep our husbands’ secrets,
or distribute them like sweets 
amongst ourselves?

I stand just a couple inches from the mirror in my grandma’s guest bathroom at her house in New Mexico, my breath fogging up the glass. As I brush my teeth, I give myself the once over and tug at the

I borrowed my mother’s car and went to the mall a lot and stole things, which I then threw into the dumpster outside. One time I drank an entire bottle of Nyquil and almost died, but nobody noticed.

Australian author Lexi Freiman’s second novel, The Book of Ayn, is the funniest book of the year. In it, a writer named Anna struggles to find meaning after being canceled for her “classist” book. To

but at no point 

does God say 

to a golden calf

“eat lead bitch”

For, indeed, posole shows you he can cook. He fancies an air of the quixotic.

He must be a feminist.

“He couldn’t decide if he wanted to draw David, fuck him, beat him up or fall in love with him.”

            -Dennis Cooper, Closer

When I first began earnestly wanting to be a writer,

For two years I worked in the office of a famous Christian singer as he approached the end of his life.

Listen: I promise you soft vowels forever
Hold fast to this butterfly mouth.

I didn’t like him at first. Seemed like a motherfucker. Girls-dripping-off-him-type, but rough. Scared me & pissed me off, how he looked me up & down. That force, that asshole face, eyes like daggers daring me to see what would happen if I didn’t.

I carried Roman water
like a trickster god, for miles
underground