DISTRACTIONS
- Reading has SUCKED the last month and a half! Could not do it, absolutely hated it, my attention span was shit, just complete basura.
-The last half of the summer was about trying to enjoy yourself after you made a decision that could potentially put your life and other’s lives at risk while also realizing that nobody is thinking as hard about it as you are.
-Known genius and best friend Puloma got married this past weekend and I am all wedding-ed out and also filled with existential dread because it was a giant life event and now I’m like okay what is the next giant life event and how much older and unfuckable will I be? I felt emotional (I always do) because all of my high school friends were there and I only had bursts of ten minute conversations with them. When Puloma was carried out by her four “brothers,” her hands covering her face with a leaf, I was thinking about how she said that she always thought Jon would be the one who would carry her out, and how he wasn’t there, and how all summer I was worried I would get COVID and wouldn’t be able to attend, and how much I love to live, and how I don’t want to miss anything, ever. And so, I’ve been distracted by my gorgeous life, sorry everybody.
-DREAMING OF YOU has been getting a lot of press & a very exciting moment for me was getting a Kirkus Starred Review!!
-I’ve been doing all of these interviews in preparation for Dreaming of You to come out next month & I’m like okay … am I smart? I guess I know what I’m talking about. Lore Yussef interviewed me for the Creative Independent and you can read that here:
-My book release will be at the Brooklyn Museum with Mia Berrin from Pom Pom Squad. You can reserve your spot here.
DISTRACTIONS AS SASHA DEBEVEC-MCKENNEY
Sasha is so cool and such a freak and when we met at NYU I knew in my meaty little heart that we would love each other. She is a poet who studies the presidents. Her poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Nashville Review, Peach Mag, Underblong, TriQuarterly, and Granta. She was the 2020-2021 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and she received her MFA from New York University. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut.
What was your relationship to books like as a kid?
I grew up absolutely surrounded by books—my mother and father are both constant readers, and the bookshelves in our house were always full. We lived within walking distance of the library and going there was a real reward. My mom read me Madeline, Pippi Longstocking, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and (my most special memory) The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. My favorite book was Stephanie’s Ponytail by Robert Munsch. In the book her dad does her hair in different weird ponytails all over her head, and my dad would do the same to me, asking how I wanted my hair done the same way the dad asked Stephanie in the book. I was obviously obsessed with [redacted popular children’s’ book series]. The student teacher for my second-grade class read us a chapter from the first book every afternoon, and I got hooked. In my copies of the later books, I timed how long it took me to read them, almost always starting at midnight (because obviously I got the books at midnight at Barnes & Noble) and finishing within 24 hours. Also (in Thee Most Millennial Bullshit Sentence Yet) after 9/11 I was too scared to be home alone so I went to the library every day after school and did [redacted book series] trivia in chat rooms. My brother and I shared a room and we had a stack of [same series] audiobook CDs and we knew the books so well we would just pick one at random to put on at night and fall asleep to. I loved books and will always love books. In high school when I got into poetry you better believe I was back at that same Barnes & Noble buying every single Charles Bukowski book they had.
What is something that is reading to you that isn't actually reading?
I’m thinking of things that activate the same part of my brain that refuses to put a book down. Things that inspire me the way reading does. Things that make me want to write. And what do I recommend to people the same way I would recommend a book, like, you MUST ingest this immediately or else you’ll never understand me or how I see the world. Like what changes me like books do? So: some stand-up comedians are such great writers I feel like I’m reading them (albeit through a thin veil of their deep need to be liked). Eavesdropping on people in bars feels like reading. And listening to coked out men ramble feels like the worst kind of reading. But really the first thing I thought of was honestly watching Love Island—it’s on every night for six weeks in the summer and the British public sort of control what happens to the people on the “island.” But really the producers control what happens. I would bet that most reality TV producers would be good writers, they’re brilliant at manipulating and manufacturing captivating narratives (except its very often harmful because they’re dealing with real people and not characters in their heads). Like would I be friends with any of the Love Island contestants or anyone from Bachelor nation? No. Have I ever been shown their true selves? Probably not. But sometimes I engage with their polls on Instagram so they can make more money from sponsors because I feel like it’s my duty so that they can continue to sell their lives for my entertainment. The Bachelor and its franchises are sprawling, and expansive and I love listening to Bachelor podcasts and speculating with my friends about it and using the show as a metaphor in my poems and I understand that I’m being lied to and I do not care.
What is a book that you would haunt when somebody opens it up in the future?
I would haunt Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power. It’s my favorite book I’ve ever read. (And I don’t feel ashamed saying that anymore since I found out that when Toni Morrison died it was one of the books on her nightstand.) I’d haunt The Path to Power so I could talk about it forever with whomever was reading it, because I could literally talk about that book forever. Like I’ve never felt so consumed. That being said, the kind of people who read presidential biographies generally need help and I would be there to help them read it properly. And I would probably engage my hauntee in a conversation about white male biographers who think they’re being objective. Or white male biographers who immediately disregard harm to women and black people as being sort of “worth it” in comparison to all the “good” the white male historical figure did. That being said Robert Caro if you’re reading this thank you and I’d be honored if you haunted me.
What are dealbreaker books for you when it comes to romantic partners? Like, if you read this, check please, never speak to me again, or, if you read this, WHERE IS YOUR BEDROOM??
I truly don’t think that the thing that makes me want to sleep with someone or not is the book they’re reading. I have friends to talk about books with. But it is nice to sleep with people who know how to read. Like as long as you know how to read, I’ll probably sleep with you.
When does reading suck for you and when does reading rule?
Reading is especially good at a bar that has reading lamps on the bar and also while parked in your car with the driver’s seat reclined and your feet out the window. Ideally your car is parked next to a pond or some trees. Also very late at night, within 50 pages of the end of the book, when you know you’re gonna fucking finish it soon and you’re sort of racing yourself but also trying to slow yourself down. Also when someone recommends you a book or lends you a book and you actually like it and don’t have to pretend to like it to not hurt their feelings, and the whole time you’re reading it you’re texting them or thinking about everything you’re gonna say about the book the next time you see them. Reading sucks when you’re reading a bad poem, or a boring poem, or a way too long poem. Or even worse when the writer of the poem is reading you the long boring poem at a poetry reading and you have to fight the urge to shut your eyes. But!!! There is no feeling like reading a good poem. I just read Hera Lindsay Bird’s Hera Lindsay Bird and then I read it three more times and I sent someone a copy and I let people borrow my copy twice. That sucked a little bit because I was jealous she managed to write a good poem about the TV show Friends, but mostly ruled.
OKAY I DID READ ONE BOOK!!!
EILEEN BY OTESSA MOSHFEGH
I almost hated this book until I couldn’t get enough of it. I’m remembering working at the Harvard Book Store and how another book seller would put it on the Christmas display giggling, because it was technically a Christmas story. Eileen is told from the perspective of a 60-year-old woman looking back on her final days living with her alcoholic father and working a prison for young boys. Her life back then was void of affection, love or hope, and as she tells the story she gives us little snippets of how much better her life is now, or at least how much life she’s let herself live. Eileen is a freak bitch. She is perverted and lonely and obsessessed with this security guard named Randy. She’s been dreaming of leaving X-ville when Rebecca, a mysterious gorgeous redhead comes into town and RILES THINGS UP. I read that Otessa Moshfegh followed this corny “How to Write A Novel” book in order to write this and that is interesting to think about because it does follow a pretty standard plot. A character’s path gets disrupted by a stranger, that character gets tested to their limits, changes forever, then goes on a different path. At first I couldn’t get over how unrelenting Eileen as a character was. She is so sullen and annoying and at parts the book seemed really fucking bleak. But then pockets of tenderness started to leak through. Her perversion and her obsessions were just how she was seeking intimacy, because she was so alone in her world. The last few pages felt like sage advice from a wise old woman, because it was. It comforted me and made me happy to be single. A great line : “At night my bed is full of love, because I alone am in it.” Bitch, that’s all you need!
POEMS!!!
THE SPOILERS
i told them all to you breathlessly, as i do, and maybe that’s why you got up & left early.
the twist was the woman was really a ghost who killed her children years ago, the twist was the man was hunting himself all along, the twist was the villain was a teratoma
growing out of the back of her head, the twist was the yellow severed head in the box, the twist was the lovers never got to see each other again because they both just died in the war, the twist was the virus was always inside of us, the twist was love because how else were they supposed to save the world from an asteroid,
how else was he supposed to find the library with the code in the space-time-continuum box, how else was he supposed to come back from the dead?
i’m sorry, i got excited. the last page of me is every page of me. i’m so obvious & predictable. algorithmed fluff made by men at a board table looking at charts, factory
candy, a well-fitted unsustainable high-waisted bikini bottom. what a weak little bitch I’ve been: moved by all of the shit that’s been manufactured for me to make me think i’ll never ever die. but I still believe it, okay? i still drink it. i still open for you.
SCREENSAVER
Maybe it’s just that we all thought there was more time;
forever to float in the sexual tension between us & the end of this world.
All of those stolen glances, those possibilities draped on a hook for the winter.
But there it is, pulsing in front of us & ready to take off our skin.
Nobody talks about how the apocalypse is so beautiful.
Or maybe they have & we weren’t paying attention.
We can’t forget about the reason for the beauty: the fire
far enough away that lights up the miles of mountains &
makes it possible to stare into a red sun.
This time tomorrow it will be a little unbearable to breathe outside.
The day after that we will be gone.
I watch us all laugh, drink & clap hands & feel devastated
for the future me remembering it.
I am almost tired of recognizing how precious things are.
Like I’m burying the jewels of every last one us
for the nuclear squirrels to find.
I don’t think we have time for that anymore: all of that dancing around.
I give up.
We both know why we’re here.
Come closer.
Close the door.
Show me how it’s gonna happen.
until next time
xoxoxox meli