Ellen in Hobart, Tasmania #139 (Transcendence)

Birdsong. I stood in a forest and saw a wren flying in the white winter sky; perched on a steeple where a bell once called children to God. For the first time since I'd slithered on my belly on this earth, I thought there might be something more miraculous than pleasure.

Sydney in Winchester, KY #138 (Hyperreality)

Black and white photograph. Faces blurred. Mom sitting on the porch of granddad's house. Darkness behind her, staring from inside the house. Serpents coiling around her ankles. She coughs up blood. A man I've never seen stands in the front yard in the far left corner of the photo and has a gun in his mouth. There are several suns in the sky. (Bevo Francis)

Clint in Glen's Ferry, Idaho #137 (Hyperreality)

So far from fire and it's ancient land. Far from you hiking up your skirt and pissing blood from the pain I've caused. So far from loving and being loved.

Mark in Lime, Oregon #136 (Hyperreality)

A bird is a mountain peak. A tree is an irrigated field. Birds of prey carrying your children off into blue skies to devour their insides. There are no names for anything under God's endless heavens.

Ricky in Avenal, California #135 (Sexuality)

Nail marks on my fat breasts, bite marks on my throat, welps on my back and thighs. Is this how I need you to show your love? Tied to our bed, gagged with a sock, blindfolded. You put my face in the pillow; you straddle my flabby body and fuck me in my chasmic asshole while I sob muffled cries of fleshly delight. This is how I need you to show your love. (Scoughs)

Thomas in Mott, North Dakota #134 (Hyperreality)

Flightless bird flying toward entropy. Craning their necks to drink blood from a bloodless being. Roosting in the branches of a tree that sprouted from an earth that died long ago.

Anna Bell in Bumble Bee, Arizona #133 (Sorrow)

Saw a mural of the Christ smiling and rising in the blue sky; transfigured in the most mediocre way. It was terrifying and heart rending to see salvation rendered so poorly. It reminded me of you. Your exaltation is illness, your rapture is poverty.

Carlos in Grand Rapids, Michigan #132 (Hyperreality)

Pissed blood this morning. Tasted it in my mouth. I'm bleeding to death and I don't have any wounds. Trickles out my anus. Pours from my nose. Flooding from my ears. I'm bleeding to death and I don't have any wounds.

Isiah in Deming New Mexico #131 (Transcendence)

There's a fire out there in the distance. Flowers In the desert, flourishing without water. That's me. Blooming, opening when the sun stands on my tendrils calling the ancient throb of life from the secret, miasmic wound I had before I was born.

Brady in Willcox, Arizona #130 (Hyperreality)

Strains of flute music awaken birds of prey roosting in my circulatory system and they fly along the dried up creek beds in my veins searching for life and starving to death.

Jean in Iraan, Texas #129 (Anxiety)

Desert, shrubs, rocks, scorched earth. Desert is my fear. Aridity. Godlessness. Dead Animals. Nothing lives, nothing is alive. Border between dreams and waking life.

Abegbe in Sokoto, Nigeria #128 (Love)

Walking in the weeds. Broken bottles. Trash. If I were a god unanswerable to man or God, I would strike you dead for the pain you've caused me but since I'm a quiet, lost girl those wounds accompany my beaten and sorrowful love.

Tara in Grand Ridge, Florida #127 (Sorrow)

The fronds of a flowering Palmetto tree. Heartbreaking life bursting from the grieving earth. Roots coiling around the bones of my little boy who drowned in the Apalachicola River in 1972.

Adrijana in Pancevo, Serbia #126 (Love)

I need you to hurt me with your awful, clawing love. Humiliate me, mangle my insides. Just love me. Release me from the prison of myself. Only shattering, shuddering, auroral, entropic love can do that.

Casey in Monticello, Florida #125 (Sorrow)

I heard a pretty girl singer on the radio this morning singing about hitting rock bottom. I've birthed two stillborn children. My husband's a drunk who fucks around and beats on me for exercise. I was born poor and I'll die poor. Who would fucking sing about me? You fucking idiots would rather listen to some brainless 20 year old pretending she's had one hard day in her whole pointless life.

Ae Sook in Pusan, South Korea #124 (Love)

I feel like the water in an atoll
Surrounded by your thin strip of land
You don't occur within me
Instead you're all around me
I can't see where my hands end
And yours begin

Sin in Hecla, OH #123 (Love)

As long as there's longing.

Carmen in Del Rio, Texas #122 (Sexuality)

Setting: A dark blue 2000 blue Ford Focus parked in the desert near the Texas/Mexico border. Budding and wilting. Trembling. Ashes.

“Can you put your hands on it? I won't tell anyone. We can get something to eat in a little bit, just please touch it. I'm scared; alone. Look at how hard it is. Will you touch it? Put your mouth on it?”

Peres In Manizales, Colombia #121 (Self Evaluation)

What grows is what should survive. Species include: wildflowers, weeds, death and illness. We ought to learn to value and cultivate the living and dead organisms that thrive in the ruins.

Laura in Orkney, Scotland #120 (Hyperreality)

Child dead in the garden. Mother squatted in the weeds and birthed him. He was icy cold and purple and blue like a bruise. Drinking blood from the wound of a slain animal, child. That's the acrid taste of life.

Stavros on the Atlantic Ocean #119 (Violence)

“Get back in that fucking crate and keep your fucking mouths shut while we get inspected or I'll slit your fucking throats!”

Ieva in Kaunas, Lithuania #118 (Love)

You won't ever love me like I love you. My love for you is so shockingly true; there's no treachery or deceit, no dissent or discord. Simple as blood in veins and birds perching with daylight on steeples. Oppressive as blue morning skies, sunlight on rocks and conquering armies; I've allowed you to cruel. That's my flesh in your teeth, my blood in your teeth.

Trystan in Ophir, Alaska #117 (Transcendence)

Give me mercy instead of clarity, questions instead of answers. Confuse and confound me, wound and astound me. Give me deepdarkdeathdreams every night and lead me to the overflowing stream in the daylight so that I can drink from the cup of agony and flood. Teach me how to be sorrowful instead of how to be happy.

Noah in Fairlawn, OH #116 (Transcendence)

Fat, impotent, quarrelsome, infirm. Unloving. A perfect candidate for mercy but when I sat in church I feel barren. New songs to be written, new languages to be spoken to express the reckless, overwhelming love of God.

Donald in Albany, OH #115 (Hyperreality)

I found a god in a forest clearing. He was sitting cross legged in the ashes of a temple that was dedicated to him that had burnt to the ground.

“You've starved and longed for my love. Traveled without meaning and without understanding. You've built me houses I couldn't live in and searched for me in places I'd never go.”

Julian in Savannah, Georgia #114 (Sexuality)

You telling me I want to fuck him? On top of all the indignities of life, I have to want him to put his hands of my body and suck my cock? This senseless brute who is as cruel as he is stupid; he stirs my vitals and makes my blood rise? The conquering sexual instinct.

Selma in Hardy, Canada #113 (Sorrow)

Trees outside the window starting to awaken where I'm beginning to fall asleep. Overcast sky. The cancer is in my womb. That's where my little boy came from. He's sitting on the edge of my bed and we wait together for the end of the material world and for the world that doesn't end.

Lynn in Moscow, Idaho #112 (Violence)

Cattle in the pasture. Crops in the field. His sleeping body next to mine. My knife in his throat. Rivers of blood in the human body. I kneel on the banks of that river and drink like a dog until my unwholesome thirst is cured.

Leonidus in Colonus, Greece #111 (Sorrow)

Edge of the forest. Aged and sleeping on the ground. I've been everywhere and found nowhere suitable. Been in houses and never found a home. No rest, no mercy, no respite, no love.

Kell in Vaasa, Finland #110 (Hyperreality)

All of us at the dinner table. Mother serves coiling vines in old iron buckets and gallons of serpent blood. Older brother ravenously devours it and when he finishes it, he puts his right hand palms up on the table. He stares at me and stabs through his hand with a steak knife. Father laughs.

Dani in Harrisonburg, PA #109 (Violence)

I've been in 3 fights with her. The first one was in a field behind school and she got on top of me when I slipped and started punching me in the face until my boyfriend pulled her off of me. The second fight was in the bathroom and I got the upper hand after I got a hold of her hair and pulled her to her knees. I kneed her in the face and busted her nose open. Her friends grabbed me and stopped it. We fought in a railroad tunnel two days ago. She got me pinned against the wall and slammed my head against it. I scratched her face and when she loosened her grip on my hair I punched her and she fell backward over the railroad track. I was about to straddle her when her best friend grabbed my friend from behind and she and I got into it until we got seperated.

Tereza in Opava, Czech Republic #108 (Sexuality)

With my thumbs, I pry your genitals apart and stare into that miasma that the human animal emerges from. I tenderly kiss your bell that rings with pleasure and you arch your back and speak in tongues. I slide my tongue into your caverns of ecstasy; you taste like birth and race memories. I want my mouth to voyage the breadth of your shuddering, sinful body.

April in Oak Hill, OH #107 (Violence)

Four years ago today my dad disappeared. He went to Applebees for a drink, staggered out around last call and drifted off into the lonesome night. His truck was still in the parking lot in the morning. I've always thought Alan Keller killed him. Dad was known for his chasing skirt and everyone says he was with Alan's wife that night. Alan's a pretty nasty guy; probably cut dad's throat and buried him in Wayne National Forest. State Police don't have the time to head out there with a shovel and the dogs. Alan's got to know that.

Jay in Burns, Oregon #106 (Dreams)

Jay in Burns, Oregon #106 (Dreams)
I had a dream that I'd been trying to fuck this elderly black lady for several years. Finally she consented and we mechanically undressed. I gathered her close to me but I couldn't get my pecker hard. She put her hands on it, her mouth on it; nothing would do the trick. I woke up and I'd shit the bed. My wife wasn't too happy about that.

Brianna in Louisa, KY #105 (Banality of daily life)

We were swimming in Yatesville Lake in my Junior Year and my friend Michael (who was really shitfaced) tried to swim across the length of the water and drowned. They drug the lake but they never did manage to find his body. Probably made a nest of mud and rocks to spend his sorrowful eternity in. He never was too particular.

Katie in Colby, Kansas #104 (Self Evaluation)

This is my hell of pleasures. Salt and sweat. Knives and rivers. Darkness descending to touch the earth and the broken backs of men. Mortification is my salvation. (Larva Lu)

Suzie in Rochester, Minnesota #103 (Self Evaluation)

Suzie in Rochester, Minnesota #103 (Self Evaluation)
These are what you've come to fear: the vandal hands of man. Trees, flesh stone, water, soil. All falls.
All poisoned. Was there a time before I was born and before I loved you? I'll move toward that source.

Connie in Springfield, OH #102 (rewriting pop songs)

Heard a song when I was driving into work this morning; it was this fucking idiot English girl singing about how she could find her man “next to” her when “times get tough”. What a load of horseshit. When I got to work I scrawled a few lines as a retort to this sentimental horseshit:
When I'm lonesome and in agony
You'll find him gone
When I need mercy and forgiveness
You'll find him gone
When I'm wilting in the summer sun
You'll find him gone
When I'm hidden in the everlasting night
You'll find him gone
When he wants his pecker sucked
You'll find him next to me
When he wants to fuck and fuck and fuck
You'll find him next to me