How-to guides contain illustrations. A guy bent over a chair. You can see his wife in the background wringing her hair. Cursing their choice to not use IKEA. ‘I told you you couldn’t do it!’ How-to guides have multiple rules that end up merging like rivers. Screw A lives next to Screw D, but not […]

1. drizzle oil onto the pan until the specks of heat feel like the blisters on your mother’s feet after a long day at the cash register greeting customers in a profuse thank you thank you thank you while handing out plastic bags with yellow smiles. 2. saute the rice & ground beef & five-spice […]

i. say ponderosa out loud. it tastes like fresh lemonade and froot loops. ii. multicoloured jellies for breakfast. yellow jello. the american dream. iii. when eating sausages slumped next to your m&m pancakes, remember your father saying: they put something in the food, you know. something that makes them fat and tall. iv. eat cold […]

Be punch-worthy Be a boxer Be a punching bag Be someone with a lot of big promises who doesn’t follow through Be with your clumsiest friends at all time Be in a group of actors who do stage fighting Be that person behind someone about to be punched who ducks at the last minute Be […]

[Intro: why you want to study your chosen subject] Firstly, stop longing / for the figure at the bus stop You have been interested in Love since that girl, I know, but stop & focus on me / for once / don’t linger Your eyes must be blind / to the flutterings / of winged […]

Take it from a cup, or bag, or maybe from behind your ear. Press down the rounded edge, not the opening. Watch the spring compress then relax, ink building up at the metal tip. Let it fall onto the fall white surface, scrape it across the page, fill the troughs with feeling. There, now you’ve […]

It is 20,000 BC, though, of course, you, hardy and paleolithic, do not know it. And you do not wonder how to be remembered. You are, I think, still grappling with phonemes and the complexity of light on water. In thousands of years, your DNA, woven and unraveled countless times in time’s nervous hands, will […]