I can hold back till I’m dead.
Then I get to hump the light.
I will be so good at dead.
No grey room to frighten me.
Only the end of all the stale colors.
Everything become all the colors.
Watch me fucking the light.
Me licking light from my fingers.
Me with the light in my ass.
Me saying more and the light saying yes.
Me finding out what I always knew.
Which is what I know now but cannot remember.
New poem involving snakes is poem of the day at the poetry foundation.
New poems involving vomit at the volta.
New poems involving vomit at powderkeg.
Rad review of SCARECRONE at fanzine.
Pitchfork interviewed me about a multimedia mixtape i curated.
Hello giggles talks about my twitter.
I’m a Virgo with a Scorpio moon and Sag rising.
SCARECRONE was the July book at Emily Books, so if you want it as an ebook you can get it there.
Laia Garcia interviewed me at Emily Books about anxiety, the problem of reality, teenhood…
Monica McClure’s dope preface to the ebook was featured at The Poetry Foundation blog.
Poem from The Iowa Review and SCARECRONE is up at The Iowa Review site.
Did an interview with Splitsider about existential tweeting.
Wrote about buying into an endless Summer of youth (I want it!) at Lemonhound.
I don’t want to be anything not even a poet, just trembles.
The way you get a poet to love you is be a ghost.
One ghost did this for me.
I rotted so hard in my wetness that I turned into a ghost myself.
But I remained a poet at heart.
That was my big mistake.
Oh god of ghosts and corporeal forms.
Help me torch my heart.
HERE IS AN E-CHAPBOOK I MADE OF 13 NEW POEMS COMMISSIONED BY NEWHIVE
HERE IS WHAT THE MAGICK DENNIS COOPER POSTED ABOUT SCARECRONE
HOW IS YR IMAGINATION?
MINE IS GOOD
New poem at PEN called LAST SEXT.
New poem at Typo called LUNAR WIDOW.
New poem in the new issue of The Iowa Review w/ a cracked mirror on the cover, but it’s not online. #legit
Three new poems in first issue of Glittermob.
I read some poems from SCARECRONE for Huffington Post in my dark yard in Venice, or u can just watch the vid on YouTube.
Guillaume Morissette wrote deep into SCARECRONE + Spencer Madsen’s You Can Make Anything Sad at On Metatron. #canada
Why did you come to the light?
Because I was hurt.
How did you get hurt?
Chasing another light.
In what way did the light hurt you?
It left me.
How did it leave you?
It was attached to a body.
Will this light hurt you?
No it is so bright.
Was the other light bright?
Even brighter.
What is different about this light?
This light is real.
Was the other light fake?
No.
Shane Jones interviewed me about my relationship w food at The Believer and I was honest.
Dazed says I’m a literary rebel.
Cool lil review of Scarecrone at Paper by Gabby Bess.
New poem + giant pic of my mug at Flavorwire.
Interview about…poetry at Entropy.
Cool lil review of Scarecrone at Bookish.
Shoutout to my twitter at Shelf Awareness.
How much longer will you write about love?
Till it’s over.
This is not really love you know that.
I know nothing.
Fill your mind with flowers instead of boys.
Boys are flowers.
Let’s not be drugs for each other let’s be deeper.
Why bother?
There is no such thing as rescue.
Rescue me.
There is no such thing as rescue.
Rescue me.
On the other side of bodies is what?
The empty.
Cease fighting everyone and everything.
Die in me.
Publishers Weekly reviewed Scarecrone & ttly got it
Blake Butler gave Scarecrone witch luv at VICE
Maureen Thorson reviewed Scarecrone at Open Letters Monthly & now I scare myself
Is anybody reading this?
Jason Diamond wrote some cool shit about my twitter at Flavorwire
Mashable wrote some other cool shit about my twitter #666
Adam Robinson told the story of Scarecrone in a rad way that includes our rare, neverbeforeseen gchats
Edward Mullany interviewed me about sex, death + the supernatural at HTMLgiant
I am afraid to be nothing.
The nothing is me, my totality and disintegration, or maybe it is just a feeling.
I call the feeling ‘nothing’ not because I am deep or French but because there is no word for becoming a whale and then dissolving.
Let’s call the feeling nothing1.
There is another kind of nothing, we’ll call it nothing2.
This nothing is a cinematic nothing, more tactile than the first, a black vacuum, a gooey void, memelike, the French one.
I have no relationship with nothing2, because it has rejected me, though sometimes I pretend to be well-versed in nothing2.
I speak as though nothing2 is a close friend, an ally, has me on its list.
I do this so as to appear deep.
I want to appear deep, because i do not feel like enough of a something.
The act of striving to appear deep, the hope that I might convince someone of my depth, feels like a something.
It feels like a punch in the nothing1.
There is no punch in the nothing1.
You cannot fake friendship with the nothing1.
There are blankets you can wrap around the nothing1.
Then the blankets dissolve with you.
what hurts more? that the world doesn’t comply with my fantasy or that i try to make it comply?
when i have a peak experience i fall off the other side. i want the world to rise to meet me. when i taste sugar i want to stay in sugar.
but real life isn’t like that.
what is real life like?
my father says: if the world was as you see it, the world would be a better place. i am 13 and haven’t started fucking.
the poet Maggie Nelson says: Fucking leaves everything as it is.
is it worth it to have the experience when i will only fall off the other side?
i am not even falling. i am creating the illusion of falling by rising. i am altering my template of arousal till nothing else is quite as good. i am putting sugar in the wound and it crusts. i am _____________.
when i am in the experience it is an intravenous shot of YOU ARE GOOD. if only i could give myself that feeling.
the clock is ticking on me giving myself that feeling.
also the clock is not ticking.
i am the one making the clock tick.
also the clock is ticking.
3 poems in the new issue of Fence, excited abt this one. it’s not online but order it–so tight. always.
did a thing at Blackbook w Myles Klee
read poems w Mira Gonzalez and w Marina Blitshteyn in Venice and taped dat shit
reviewed god and botox A++ highly recommend
in the dream i ate a handful of black pills yes i wanted to be cradled yes i was trying to die no the black pills were not drugs yes they were vitamins yes i tried to kill myself with vitamins yes i had to kill myself with vitamins because i wanted to protect my sobriety yes even in dreams i protect my sobriety yes even in death i protect my sobriety no the vitamins were not time-release yes they were coffin-shaped no i did not die yes i woke up in my bed yes i got in the shower yes the shower turned into a coffin yes the coffin filled with all my headstuff yes my headstuff is loud yes this happens every morning yes i can make anything into a coffin no i do not pride myself on this yes sometimes i do yes sometimes i build a persona around my coffin-making yes female poets and suicide no i do not consider myself a female poet no i do not consider myself a male poet yes i am tired of considering myself no not tired enough to stop considering myself yes all i do is consider myself yes this is what the headstuff is made of yes it is made of made my considerations of myself yes the headstuff is an allergy yes it is an allergy to reality yes there is a way to turn it off yes i can turn it off with light no i cannot do this by myself yes i know where to find the light yes that is a blessing yes hallelujah yes sometimes the light comes to me yes that is called grace yes most times i have to walk to the light yes that is also grace yes the grace to keep walking yes i must like the light yes i must really like the light yes i must like it better than the coffin yes i keep walking there
I don’t know anything about ego-slaying except I know a little.
I fail and fail and fail at ego-slaying every day.
I mean, ego-slaying is about the practice anyway, and practice includes total failure, so it’s fine.
Also, ego-slaying is about the rehumbling, I think, the building self up on ego bullshit so as to then have it cut away AGAIN and be slain and laid fucking bare AGAIN and have to surrender to the benevolent and egoless truth AGAIN.
I only choose the benevolent and egoless truth as my last-ass resort.
Like, I don’t choose it until I am forced.
I crawl towards it begging.
And it always takes me back.
And it always takes me back.
I think it chooses me.
But that is also another story.
The story I want to tell is thus:
Ego-slaying in writing poems is doable.
You can so get out of your own way.
It is a muscle and it can be worked–the getting out of your own way muscle.
I don’t write poems from my brain anymore, not anymore ever.
I write from somewhere fucking else and am grateful to have found that place.
I wrote my way into it and prayed and meditated and channeled.
I pray and meditate and channel only because I have to.
I fucked up my way into it, really.
I write from there and there alone now.
I like it there.
I like that place.
Fuck the rest.
So I write from that place and then I put the thing I wrote away.
Then later, only later, I take the thing back out.
I edit it until the thing is quiet.
When I say quiet I don’t mean quiet like sound-quiet or tone-quiet.
I mean quiet in the sense that there isn’t any part left that when it speaks I feel like ‘shut the fuck up asshole’.
Asshole is ego.
But you knew that.
That’s all I have to say.
Amen
ok
NEW POEM IN GIGANTIC HALLOWEEN ISSUE
3 NEW POEMS IN PAPERBAG
NEW POEM AT BUSHWICK SWEETHEARTS
I LIVE IN VENICE LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA NOW, BTW
"Milk Fed is a romp…a pageant of bodily juices and exploratory fingers and moan after moan of delight."
–Los Angeles Times
"A dizzily compelling story of love, lust, addiction, faith, maternal longing, and…frozen yogurt."
–Vogue
"A revelation…Melissa Broder has produced one of the strangest and sexiest novels of the new year..."
–Entertainment Weekly
"A thrilling examination of hunger, desire, faith, family and love."
–Time
"Milk Fed bravely questions the particularly female lionization of thin and loathing of fat, landing on fresh explanations…deliciously droll…a celebration of bodily liberation."
–The New York Times
"Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed is a delectable exploration of physical and emotional hunger."
–The Washington Post
"A sensuous and delightfully delirious tale… Filled with an unadulterated filthiness that would make Philip Roth blush, Broder’s latest is a devour-it-in-one-sitting wonder."
–O, the Oprah Magazine
"A modern-day mythology for women on the verge — if everything on the surface stops making sense, all you need to do is dive deeper.."
–The New York Times
"The Pisces convincingly romances the void."
–The New Yorker
"Explosive, erotic, scathingly funny…a profound take on connection and longing that digs deep."
–Entertainment Weekly
"The dirtiest, most bizarre, most original works of fiction I’ve read in recent memory…Broder has a talent for distilling graphic sexual thoughts, humor, female neuroses and the rawest kind of emotion into a sort of delightfully nihilistic, anxiety-driven amuse bouche…"
–Vogue.com
"A page turner of a novel…funny and frank."
–Washington Post
"The Pisces is an intellectual, enthralling voyage into one woman’s swirling mind as she brushes with the extraordinary."
–Refinery29
"Get ready to laugh-cry over and over again...a perverse romance that captures the addictive and destructive forces of obsessive love. The Pisces is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking."
–Vulture.com
"What separates Broder from her confessional cohort...is that she doesn’t seem to be out to shock, but to survive."
–Elle
"Broder presents a dizzying array of intimate dispatches and confessions…She has a near-supernatural ability to not only lay bare her darkest secrets, but to festoon those secrets with jokes, subterfuge, deep shame, bravado, and poetic turns of phrase."
–New York Magazine
"A triumph of unsettlingly relatable prose."
–Vanity Fair
"Her writing is deeply personal, sophisticated in its wit, and at the same time, devastating. SO SAD TODAY is a portrait of modern day existence told with provocative, irreverent honesty."
–Nylon
"At once devastating and delightful, this deeply personal collection of essays…is as raw as it is funny."
–Cosmopolitan
"Broder writes about the hot-pink toxins inhaled every day by girls and women...and the seemingly impossible struggle to exhale something pure, maybe even eternal...there's a bleak beauty in the way she articulates her lowest moments."
–Bookforum
"Broder may be talking about things like sexts, Botox, and crushes, but these things are considered alongside contemplations about mortality, identity, and the difficulty of finding substance in a world where sometimes it’s so much easier to exist behind a screen."
–The Fader
"…So Sad Today is uplifting and dispiriting in seemingly equal measure. It’s a book that’s incredibly human in the way it allows for deep self-reflection alongside Broder, which speaks not only to her powerful writing but also the internet’s magical ability to foster connections."
–A.V. Club
"...delightful...Broder embarks on an earnest, sophisticated inquiry into the roots and expressions of her own sadness...deeply confessional writing brings disarming humor and self-scrutiny...Broder's central insight is clear: it is ok to be sad, and our problems can't be reduced to a single diagnosis. "
–Publishers Weekly
"Broder is probably the Internet’s most powerful merchant of feelings…"
–GQ
"Vividly rendered and outspokenly delivered essays…Sordid, compulsively readable entries that lay bare a troubled soul painstakingly on the mend."
–Kirkus Reviews
"Broder manages to conjure a psychic realm best described as one part twisted funhouse and two parts Catholic school, heavy on libido and with a dash of magick. This gritty, cherry soda–black book...is bizarrely sexy in its monstrousness."
–Publishers Weekly
"I don’t know what a book is if not a latch to elsewhere, and Scarecrone has pressed its skull against the hidden door. It is neither drunk nor ecstatic to be here—it is a state unto itself."
–VICE
"Lushly dark and infused with references to black magic, Broder's work often feels less like a book and more like a mystical text."
–PAPERMAG
"Out to 'crucify boredom,' her poems show us how any relationship with the divine is no less at risk of engendering grotesque lust...What makes Broder such a pleasure on the page is her insistence that these dramas play out on a workaday stage infused with surreal Pop and imaginative muscle..."
–Publishers Weekly
"With a title recalling Yeats...Broder risks the divine in her second book...shrewd, funny, twisted, sad poems..."
–The Chicago Tribune
"Meat Heart...is unbelievable and overwhelming for its imaginative power alone, but if you listen past the weird you can hear all sorts of things: sadness, seriousness, life, death, and a whole lot of laughter....Broder is a tremendous talent"
–Flavorwire
"...Meat Heart embodies that strain of sustenance, that sort of psychosomatic excitement most valiant art more or less tries to pull off…Her poems don’t bore or bear down. They beam oracle energy. They pump a music of visions for the life-lusty death dance."
–BOMB
MOTHER
“This debut from Broder is as funny and hip as it is disturbing… a bright and unusual debut.”
–Publishers Weekly
"…obsessive, energetic and pop-culture-infused poetry…"
–Time Out New York
"Broder’s insight and honesty will make your brain light up and your hair stand on end.”
–The San Francisco Examiner
"Broder’s verse is acrobatic and whip-smart… its own creature."
–Bomb
