before we begin i want to let you know I’ll be teaching a poetry is gay writing workshop on ZOOM on december 23 at 7:30 EST so if you have been wanting to come but aren’t in NYC this is your shot!! link here
i’m stacking from the train, where it smells like diaper and i’m listening to 2am (breathe) convinced it’s a song about abortion.
i am going to see my second favorite band (fleet foxes, first is paramore) and i smoked walking to the train and almost bought flowers for the lead singer then remembered we aren’t tight like that. i was in my room feeling so heavy, like a bag of sand, (do you ever feel like a plastic bag… of sand), and i heated up my leftover chicken over rice i got from the bodega last night. it’s sad, to reheat bodega food. i don’t think that legally counts as “dinner” but neither does a $8 cafe sandwich on a baguette so hard you have to yank it with your teeth like jerky.
my favorite meal i had in LA was el pollo loco. look if you don’t know, you just don’t fucking know okay. el pollo loco has been a fixture in my life for as long as i remember. el pollo loco and chick fil a existed similar spaces in my mind— the best fast food we could only get on special occasion. we lived near a mcdonald’s and a taco bell, that wasn’t exotic, that wasn’t erotic. chick fil a we had to wait for thanksgiving or christmas when we went to marietta, georgia to see our grandparents. one year we went, i forgot to bring shirts so i went to the old navy and my grandma bought me some. they call benihana “fujihana” in georgia, i’d report back to the fourth grade, only now realizing they could not even be related, just two hibachi restaurants ending in “hana”
wait that’s lowkey poetic as fuck. ??? “god has favored me”, no wonder the fried rice is so good. if a word in english meant “god favored me” it would be butter. i didn’t see a lot of butter growing up, mostly olive oil and gluten free flour. only butter when we made banana muffins. my mom rarely baked but when she did it was banana bread. i had a tweet go viral in HS (45 likes) and it said: “when you at school craving banana bread then come home from school to a fresh loaf” and it was a picture of my friend Jeremy looking creepy and mischievous.
youth is wasted on the young i guess. i’m even young now and im like I WISH I WERE YOUNGER! as if i won’t be nostalgic for today by next week.
i’m going to bowery ballroom for the show and i keep forgetting which stop it’s off. like girl, bowery.
i grew up next to an el pollo loco and when we moved from the deep suburbs to the slightly more relevant suburbs we moved away from the el pollo loco. but on the drive to tahoe we could get it, or if we drove the 30 min back to our old neighborhood. i remember after my boob job (first one) my mom drove me to the el pollo loco 30 min away so i could get a pollo bowl and a side of mac n cheese. one of our better moments.
not to be soooo american but fast food is good as fuck. like the ones with chicken specifically- i think the burgers are all poisonous and the chicken nuggets are fried pink goo but
cane’s, chick fil a, el pollo loco, popeyes, KFC…. those are some incredible institutions!
the day i got dropped from every sorority in college (because i had adult braces) i ordered KFC to my dorm and got an entire life sized chocolate cake (not miniature just a regular sized cake) and i cried in my bed after going over to my mom’s friend’s daughters dorm (who I’d met once) and cried in her shorts and t shirt. i didn’t even get to wear my dress. i just peeled it off and threw it on the floor and picked it up a few years later for coachella.
fried chicken was there for me the day i realized my “community” wouldn’t care about me if i wasn’t pretty (in the way where you dont have braces and a unique style). i remember my sister coaching me on what to say about the elephant in the room: “yeah im actually getting them off before halloween!” the alpha phis couldn’t help but look behind me, for a girl with teeth like pearly white gates. i’d sign into the orthodontist’s office on my knees (ugly betty coded) and beg them to get taken off. adult braces were sent to me to teach me how shallow and mean people are.
i miss the days before postmates when all we had was the phone number to the mountain mikes, a $20 bill and the Benchwarmers DVD. i miss waking up to the credits talking in circles and being enveloped completely by the brown leather couch, hungover on Orange Fanta and Dance Dance Revolution.
when i was in la i was singing so much more. i used to say you can tell when im happy because im singing more. when i am quiet its very much a canary in a coal mine for my mental illness. growing up i never expressed my emotions i would just go nonverbal and look forlorn, waiting for someone to ask if i was okay, then insist on them prying me open like a pistachio.
it felt good to sing in the crowd with fleet foxes. i miss being in choir. our director used to always pull up cheesy articles on how choral music makes your heartbeat synch up with the other members of the choir and i used to roll my eyes but i can’t believe i was 14 and experiencing something that profound. that’s like saying i love you in missionary times a million. synchronized heartbeats with 125 teenagers? all from different lives, different backgrounds, different struggles and fears? hearts beating as one? that’s the true meaning of christmas, bitch.
this is how it felt tonight, when everyone started singing the counter melody in Mykonos. we all sounded like little sugar cookie angels. everyone was singing so sweetly and saintly and we sounded like a children’s chorus grown up. you know how little kids can sing in unison and no matter what it sounds sweet and good? because it’s so pure? that’s what it sounded like.
i made a list of all the people i’ve had sex with and their genders.
statistically, i’m bisexual. culturally, i’m lesbian. logistically, i’m over it.
i was very inspired by the movie what’s your number as a kid and always dreamed of the day when i’d live in new york and have sex with 20 people.
i’m not there (YET!) but i downlaoded Feeld to see if we can get there!!! i want to be an unmarried HAG!
i downloaded Feeld and immediately have so many people liking me but i have no idea how to reply to them. i wrote in my bio that i dont wanna fuck your boyfriend unless he’s really hot, which i fear may give a bunch of audacious bisexuals an opportunity to fend for their crusty boyfriends. but hinge is a pretty passive and sexless app and i think im ready to get out there.
feeld has you list your kinks.
brat, dom, rope bunny, toys, flirting, massage, cuddling, intimacy, rough.
i got shy. all of mine are something like monogamy, intimacy, communication, connection.
i like that we can rebrand healthy relationships as a kink. yes im kinky, i want secure attachment. to make sweet love, heartbeats synched as one, all singing fleet foxes in harmony and saying i love you in missionary.
what am i looking for? well i know what it is but it seems unreasonable. a committed girlfriend who has a beautiful rack and a more beautiful mind (i know — if that’s even possible!)
i’ve been getting really gender essentialist about boob guy and ass guys. guys is obviously gender neutral. and men have been saying that for years until i started calling them “girl”, which i’ve been told is NOT gender neutral. it’s midnight and i want a juice from mr kiwi. much to my chagrin they are open.
hours later and im belly full of juice. i learned mr. kiwi is only closed for one hour out of 23, from midnight to one. the juice guy just takes a break and comes back.
i bought a guy on the street asking for money and grape soda. he could’ve asked for anything and he got grape soda.
i am figuring out feeld and i think it’s cool. i matched with a hot lesbian who’s interests are simply “scissoring” umm. i think im gonna like it here! if scissoring has 0 fans im dead.
my take on the boob girl/ass girl thing is you want what you dont have. if you have tits, you want ass, if you have ass (me), you want tits.
st. vincent made a guitar for people with boobs and so i had the idea to make a microphone for people with boobs. it’s a microphone with my phone number on it.
someone i hook up with sometimes always texts me after having negronis so i joke that every negroni must come with my phone number.
i got home from the show and tied a ribbon around my cat’s neck and took flash photography of him. he hated it obviously. but come on look
he’s so cute. i’m finishing my juice at 1 am wondering if my cat is mad at me.
i said to my friend ryan in LA “you hate me” and he said, “no but thats your dream isn’t it. for everyone to hate you?”
and it’s like honestly? yes. if i knew everyone hated me i could just relax. i was right! now i can start over!
now im back on the J, taking the train to my DBT group therapy. i feel bad because i forgot my packet and i didn’t get new stickers. the first week one of the girls said “i don’t know how i can commit to myself by coming to this group every week. i want to but i don’t know if i will” and i said “maybe this is silly but … i have stickers?” and everyone’s face LIT UP. now a few girls bring stickers and at the end of the session we pass them around.
growing up is all about staying young. i still remember the metallic textured little mermaid stickers my piano teacher would give me after my lessons. i had an entire door full of stickers in my room growing up we eventually replaced. i still think about it her.
poemme time?
november 7 2024 church of god presidente beer building for sale 99 cent friendly trabajo, passion, honestidad daily press harriet ross tubman avenue african pride accident lawyers brookdale family care center color match what kind of wizard are you? CTE high school santa biblia blissful pretzel bun going out of business everything must go thank you for your business drivers wanted what the living do we miss our mom’s calls, we forget the pills dad took after he lost his we tell dad we can’t come home for the full week just four days so we don’t go crazy we forget his dad playing puzzles all day in the asylum, he calls it he has his favorite nurses but no nieces the grandkids stopped coming home for christmas and we started decorating our own christmas trees we rescue a cat since mom was allergic, or so she says she was the same way dad always had migraines on sunday mornings i tell her i’m allergic to texas on thanksgiving week i tell my dad i have a migraine on christmas i take my pills they gave me after my family split i ran out this morning am i running on empty or am i finally clean? is it bad, does it mean something, if i can’t fight this thing? sometimes the sun never comes up and i swear it’s so dark it’s like looking at your feed under murky water and you know they must be there but you’re swimming and you can’t see them and you wonder if you’ll stop here in the deep end your final lap and then it strikes you yellow blossoms popping through the snow daffodils in central park christmas is over and the miracles have just begun i shake my pills like maracas and remember i know how to salsa i think of the heat and the sweat of unknown bodies moving my hips in mexico city i think about the taste, that first time, of sweet tender lips that indistinguishable flavor i’ve tried to remember for years there are things i can hold onto these are the things that keep me living movie star hair we wanted body i flipped my head upside down and he hit me with the hot shot the black conair hairdryer like the ones that come with the motel 6 rooms i look at my mom’s makeup brushes and ask her every single morning if i can do her hair before work she is the boss she wouldn’t let an intern do her face i watch her put the coffee color into her crease i still remember the smell of the Viva La Glam lipstick my mother was a MAC girl she bought me the orange shadow from the nordstrom counter when we needed it for cheer competitions i used to say blue and orange followed me around one day i got the courage to dye my hair and i felt just like hayley williams i too, wanted to be the girl with red hair even when her hair wasn’t red anymore ryan dyed his green in college and we never forget it even though he looks like forrest gump now we walk the reservoir and when we laugh its like looking into a mirror we look at the moon and i can’t believe it’s the same one from summer camp it’s the same one from florida when i sat alone with it crying next to the pool someone passed out in one summer they were doing a breath holding competition now they have signs for it do not do breath holding competitions i watched a grown man shit the pool i chased after sand crabs we drank smirnoff watermelon and cried about death and life and love and the lack of it we chased our shadows and ran into each other full force, freaky friday style hoping to switch lives we drove back to atlanta in the GMC and went back to living across the country i couldn’t believe we were looking at the same moon i took spanish she took french i wanted to move to italy, i told my parents when we went to europe that one summer and i was gone from my boyfriend for 3 weeks and he cried every night and i had so much fun drinking orange wine with my sister in the rain i stayed home from the club one night to FaceTime and i wonder what i would’ve seen, if i had let myself go
desperate housewives poem
lynette is pregnant with twins, again
tom scavo had to sell his red mustang to the neighbors
i sit and watch desperate housewives like my life depends on it
and maybe it does
i ask the juice lady if she watches betty la fea
i am so focused on conjugating verbs
i forget to bring my juice
she runs out to hand it to me in the street as we are saying goodbye and i am so glad i paid attention in class
i let your tears fall on me like an early winter drizzle
they fall right off my face like a rain slick
i feel like coraline in my yellow coat and blue hair
and i miss the maple smell of my cat and his warm chest
as he sits below me on the couch, watching yes
another episode
we sit down and clock in for a 5 and a half hour shift
at the desperate housewives factory
gabrielle’s hair is long again,
they got money back after carlos got his sight back
i am so addicted to these women and how easy it is
for me to step into their lives and out of my own
i consider jacking off while i collage
because my art is pornographic and i look at
tits all day in my room and i daydream about what they would be like if they were here, in my room, attached to a body attached to a head of a woman
who doesn’t live on wisteria lane, on a set, in a hospital,
on the paramount lot
i pick up the ribbon for Oliver and start a beautiful new configuration that has taken me weeks to discover
he goes ballistic and i am a genius
he won’t shut up and that is when i realize
its already time for us to eat dinner
i am sick of my chili and i am sure
he is sick of kibble
we both devour it the same
my grandma sent us a cat tree
i never understood how a gift for someone else
could be a gift for yourself
he runs up and down and i think that he could go to the olympics
and if he killed a woman in a hit and run
i would cover for him
the women of wisteria lane are teaching me
how to be a mother
because no one else ever taught me how
i grew up this year and my roots are firmly planted
in the couch we inherited
from the roommate before me
maggie tells me to reset my bed karma
after a bad night sleep by washing the sheets
so i get rid of my mattress and i get rid of the frame
i buy new sheets
i sold the bones of the bed to a woman
on facebook marketplace
i don’t want the same indent of my body anymore
i want to create a new carving of myself
waking up next to a baby that will never grow up
holding onto someone that loves me
no matter what
LOVE YOU FOREVER!!!
xoxooxox,
brooke