We took a bus down to Dallas, TX, probably forty or fifty of us, and spent the night praying for our families in a large hotel room.

Benjamin Charles Dowd

This has nothing to do with what you etch into the trunk
with his only pocket knife or that it will take him hours to axe
the tree down, set it aflame. Or that it was

It was obvious to me that you needed to talk, and I was there to listen and record.

Make a vision board

Watch Girl, Interrupted

Eat more protein

I 

I wake up one morning and want to read Woolf. Being a woman writer. Is being a woman-who-is-a-writer something to consider, or. Yet it is not the gender really but the closeness to the skin,

I won’t front about Jarmusch. He’s cooler than my ability to describe shit. He’s our genuinely cool filmmaker, anachronistic above ideal, an atavist with perfect hair. He’s the reason people should

            SCENE

An ill wind that blows nothing. Autumn eats its leaves. It’s hard enough to understand the sequence of things--the king becomes the queen, the queen becomes the joker,

A burrito, historically, was a food of convenience, much like the sandwich—a transport vehicle for the meal itself...

It has bullet holes in it.

Or rather, it’s meant to look like it’s been peppered with buckshot. The front of my Guns N Roses Chinese Democracy World Tour 2002 ★ 2003 black t-shirt features a

1. 

as great as our best days will be
our worst days will be twice as worse
you can’t take from somebody their right to be wrong i try to love you as much as i hate myself
i don’t dance

Versace "Medusa" V-Neck T-Shirt

This is the first article of designer clothing I ever owned. A month or so after I got out of rehab my grandma gave me a Nordstrom gift card for my birthday and

1.

In the middle of our city are the woods, which are full of animals.

Kara asks: “How much further, Marcus? Do you remember?”

"Quiet."

I don't remember. The woods get bigger each

But almost everyone is better to party with than writers. Like cops. Cops have way better stories than writers do.

THE CORNER PRIEST

"All things considered, you'd best not putter around, frittering hours, but listen to your heart," the guru said (only its real wish is for the market-- to be an exec with a

he said 'i think i work out just as like, an excuse to drink protein, you know?'

Imagine if you can, "a dirty house in a gutted world," the poet said, which what the poet said is precisely what I saw when I stopped to look around while listening to reports from the BBC and ironing my favorite lavender blouse. 

ii.
There were too many lizards

MY FATHER PLAYS SONGS TO THE MOON, MY SON PLAYS SONGS TO THE MOON

An absence surrounds the cabin; an absence haunts it.

My father sits inside, playing sad songs to the evening on his own

Architecturally, it is almost an exact replica of the Indonesian-style villa he had constructed on the Caribbean island of Mustique in the late 80s; the original, with its layered streams and koi

I enjoy when a formal beauty proves they have art. Gosling did. Even Shia. Franco tries. We all mean well. There’s lots of ways to feel pain besides being ugly

Rauan has died before now. This revelation was not something divulged one evening when the blood had cooled and certain admissions are made all by themselves. No. He’s never said so, this

PRIVATE INTERACTIONS IN A MIXED-SEX GROUP

Together, we separate. We stare at mud or Easter’s grey river, disciplined, young,
mouthy mutts, steadfast as oranges, stable, on pursuit or in

The posse gutted your daddy’s cattle and made your little sister gasp until she made no sounds at all.  They lit cigars off the flames of your mother’s head and tied your daddy’s neck to a horse. 

In November 2011, Bethesda Game Studios released Skyrim, a gigantic, multi-console fantasy role playing game set in Bethesda's larger Elder Scrolls universe. Also in November 2011, I was just starting my graduate program at the University of Washington. I watched the footage on YouTube and told myself that after grad school, after I was done studying literary nonfiction and contextualizing and living an examined life, I would play the hell out of this game.