Find a Family
Ottessa Moshfegh was my therapist
the summer I wanted fame
She looked at me like a dullard,
pulled cockroaches out of her incisors,
“You think you know something,”
she said, “you don’t know anything at all”
I held my ground and twiddled my thumbs
but she looked unimpressed, might have
imagined my suffocation, one
stiletto on my throat, two burgers in
hand.
Her first instruction was
self-immolation
by the beachside
She gathered twigs and almond oil and
looked bored while she loaded a hotdog
with all the relish she could muster,
ketchup and pig fat on her lips while I
completed my pyre
“This is what I should do?” I asked
“When will you learn?” she countered
I took this as gospel and meditated
in a squat, lit the match
until it was all fire for a good second,
a good minute, bikram hot, dribbling,
but she hosed me down with an
extinguisher,
and shook her head with a scowl
“You’re a fucking idiot,” she said
“Is that good?” I asked.
She was slow to show her emotions
but I knew she was happy
when I wore my bomber hat
and showed up crying
at her paper-scattered loft
on the city’s dead outskirts
she gave me two pill bottles
to eat while I stared at
ancient statues alone, finally said
“maybe we’re getting somewhere”
For three days I wandered the city
with cocktails and cigarettes
until I was shirtless
and sinking into the pavement
There were signs everywhere
that only some people understood
shirts said words that weren’t
in the dictionary, and god,
if you’d weighed all that flesh,
performed ten million brain scans
maybe you’d understand the future
I didn’t even remember my name
Ottessa was pleased, but she’d eaten
a lot of aspirin that day
She showed me a new reality TV show
where people starved themselves
to the edge of their final death
while we had something to eat.
Where was it all going?
My eyes were popping out
on their little flesh strings,
my lower back was ninety years
old, at least, cancer was on its way and
every capillary was stuffed and exhausted,
even my internal monologue sounded
like some lobotomized aristocrat
Ottessa would probably be dead
in a few decades, wouldn’t she?
Anyone with a shock of pulse remaining
would know it was time for a change
I backed away from the busted
direction, made eye-contact
with stones, slipped out of my shoes,
put on a hood, took it off, made a garland
of pines and wore it like a fragrant
noose,
and when Ottessa turned
the corner with blood make-up I turned
away,
put an image of myself
over a ceramic over a hood
covering my face and walked with abandon.
Where do you end up when you reject
the rejector?
Me, finally falling in a field, my
face-pot cracking open,
my eyes dazzling and dilating in a grassy
meadow
and there, over there in a broken line,
writers
that drank tea with yuzu oil, blue flowers,
some were trying on and taking off their
masks,
and I watched them for a while,
and I imitated them for a while,
and then we just sat there, together,
taking turns doing this and that,
something was opening, Ottessa
was becoming one of many.
I Thought I Saw Joaquin Phoenix
I thought I saw him
he was on the sidewalk
his eyes were squinted
you know what I mean
it was Joaquin Phoenix.
Joaquin Phoenix,
I wanted to say,
Maybe it will be okay
Maybe the oceans will sink
Yellowstone might be a dud
Trees will grow like mega-churches
And with that I took him in for a hug,
his musty paranoid smell and knotty muscles
Thank you, he said. I’m Joaquin Phoenix.
I was at a yoga session
sprung out in down dog,
neck softening, legs lengthening,
when I thought I saw Sappho
She wasn’t very good at yoga.
Her best pose was child’s pose
Wait, I thought, child’s pose?
I was so distracted that the teacher
came over to my mat as my mother. Stop
focusing on Sappho’s practice and
get a move on, she said. What?
I asked, waking up.
It’s time for a transformation, someone said
What? I asked
You heard me
I looked around the room
but couldn’t see anyone;
This made the pronouncement seem true
I packed my bags and walked into the ocean
It was cold, and I needed to dry off,
and I didn’t know if I’d learned what I was supposed to,
so I climbed to the top of a very tall and windy tree.
Of course it was nostalgic
It couldn’t have been incidental
that a beam of light was parting the clouds &
lighting up on my forehead, but I wasn't sure
what it was supposed to mean.
I walked home
depressed &
found a woman
with a crown
and goth boots
& a tattoo of a
heart on her foot
sitting on my couch.
I can see you now, I said
I was hiding on your couch the whole time, you idiot, she said.
How do you respond to that?
I didn’t. Instead I applied
for a gameshow and travelled to L.A.
Soon I was sitting in the contestants
chair and — I couldn’t believe it —
Joaquin was standing on the stage with ribbons
all over his dress clothes. Swipe right and I’m yours,
he said, smiling shyly, but adorably, batting
his eyelashes just a smidge.
He must have known I would swipe right,
but he was wrong.
I saw others behind him
and I was feeling choosy,
and I’m nothing if not curious.
Is that Bill Murray?
No, it was Christopher Walken.
Is that Sinead O’Connor?
No, an imitator.
I kept swiping left,
dropping one sad start after another,
until the audience started to grow electric cords
and turn on me.
I ran to grab whatever I could,
but all that was left was one pencil,
and Joaquin, laying on the burning floor.
Help me, he said. Please.
The audience was turning into a frenzy
Twelve year-old girls were kicking up Starbucks cups &
rating the noses of celebrities. Men were clipping their toe nails &
screaming at everyone who told them to stop what they were doing.
Please help me, he said, as a group
of hip kids locked him in a cage
He stared at me, helplessly, lugubriously,
while he was carried away for selfies.
Write about me, he mouthed, crying,
Write about me with that pencil.
I turned away emotionally
and walked all the way home,
making sense of one more day,
and I wrote it all down.
