it’s august and summer is almost over. feel old yet?

i went to queer gymnastics this week (they dont call it gymnicestics..) and i am officially an old woman. i feel like the tin man who needs his oil can. my entire body hurts i am going to go to the bodega and ask for two bags of ice and a blue gatorade and do this:

i went into queer gymnastics alone and i left with a groupchat. we are going to all watch stick it on my roof before it gets too cold. i am also trying out for the gay cheer team!!! and feeling all my old memories rush back to me. did you know i was a cheerleader for 8 years? my high school best friend always teased me for bringing up being a former competitive cheerleader whenever i could. nothing has changed.

what’s new with me? well i am breaking my year long #girlsober journey and starting to go on dates again. and they have been just swell. the butterfly effect is crazy man… what do you mean i take a year off from dating to work on myself and now i’m going on pleasant dates with beautiful women and i feel normal about it? what the beep?

i have my heating pad on my shoulders listening to chappell roan’s debut album (which came out 3 years ago… feel old yet FR!) i never told you guys the story of when i met chappell roan before she was famous and i drove her to zebulon in my red jeep and played pink pony club in the car and she hated it.

people hate women and i am taking a stance as a lesbian to continue to love women despite them hurting my feelings. loving women is the most radical thing i can do, actually. if you think people dont hate women, look at the comments of any female comedian’s instagram reels. i probably would have 100k followers on instagram if i had the cojones to post stand up reels. it will happen someday. i put on my goal list for this year to have 100k followers on instagram. you can just put anything on your goals list, you know.

i made this bingo board a while ago for my dating life and i’m putting it here if anyone gets a bingo or two let me know.

looking back at this it’s kind of random and funny but ultimately? that is my vibe!!! i should have put loves to collage on here but no problem. it isn’t everything but it is something.

i have been on 3 dates and they have all been well, just swell! i think women are beautiful and smart and funny and that i deserve love. fellas???

every day i fall more in love with my cat, i bring more random junk into my apartment and bring random trash out of it, i watch more american horror story with ronan and eat as many peaches as i can before the season runs out.

i made a swag lamp out of my tutu and i found a trinket shelf on the street and filled it with things like fidget toys, old wallets, broken cameras, troll dolls, nail polish and creepy baby dolls with blue hair. yayyyyyy i love my life!

i have more stuff to say but not quite yet.

quick commercial break:

my FIRST EVER POETRY BOOK is coming out and you can come to the launch party!!! and i have a COMEDY SHOW where we find a lesbian couple a sperm donor. and im TEACHING POETRY every other monday! you can come to all these things and buy tickets at this link. you can also order my chapbook Getting Fingered in a Hoodie !!!!

come to shows and poetry workshops!!!

ok without further ado, let’s get into some poemmes.

cruising 
shopping for tail on LGBTQ housing 
you can sublet my lap for tonight 
free of charge 
as long as you feed the cat 

sweet baby jesus 
your eyes
are like honey pots
i get sticky just looking in em 

someone poured beer 
in my purse
you stepped all over my shoes 
i felt drunk and high 

the music moved me 
i remembered who i was 
under green skies 
mist like the grocery store 
we’re all vegetables 
becoming stir fry 

i sang on the stool to judy 
i shook my ass to jackson browne 
i touched your hand by accident 
i wanna do it on purpose 

your eyes are honey pots
i get sticky just lookin at em 
things change
cause we do 


lake tahoe 
it’s a bad day to be my hater 
ex is getting called out on twitter
hayley williams knows who i am 
everyone in tahoe likes my blue hair
especially the girl with white dreds
and the gay guy at the gas station 
my grandma is teaching me how to make
chicken pot pie and pound cake
we’re making a font out of her cursive
drinking mexican cokes 
the zyrtec hitting 
calves sore from hiking to the waterfalls 
if you aren’t in credit card debt
you don’t fuck 

train delay 
the amtrak going to martinez hit a man on the tracks
now we are waiting for the coroner 
i need to be sending emails,
sending money to people 
but my peach is bruised all over 
i miss my mom 
peach juice all over my shirt 
pulp in my teeth 
they are pulling a new train next to us
arresting the woman who ran off with her baby 
hit the emergency exit and committed a felony 
barefoot with a toy stroller
everyone needs something 
everyone plays with railroad tracks 
some people lose an arm 
some people lose it all 
men talk on the phone 
little girls cover their ears
my legs have little ants all over them 
crawling up and down in the dry sand
my face tan like it used to 
i want there to be a perfect place


summer storm 
it’s the end of the world
and i’m risking my life
to see the mary oliver documentary 
new yorkers are the baddest bitches 
on the planet
open toed shoes for the flash flood warning
daisy dukes for the wildfire acid rain  
i love a bitch who wears jellies in a storm 
let it all in, don’t resist the water 
get your toes wet for once
don’t worry about the tetanus 
wet, running and 
taking refuge on the blue benches 
rain coats and mary janes,
standing under the scaffolding 
ghosting a cigarette 
before the metal show 
nothing will stop us 
from riding this thing
until the wheels fall off

jealousy 
does bleach smell like cum to you? 
it does to me
but what do i know about cum 
or bleach for that matter? 
i'm sleeping with a bowl of 
beans and rice next to my head
i took a beta blocker because a girl 
who isn’t me 
got her dream job  
it made my chest a wasps nest 
it made me as hot as a subway station 
it made me as small as a pee bottle on the tracks 
i have sex and i have consequences 
i learn lessons and teach them 
i stop drinking and smoking and i change 
everyone else does too 
i cant make everyone happy 
i cant make anyone anything 

next chapter
my arms hurt from carrying 
books of poetry and 
little white tank tops 
it must be july in new york city 
my chapbook has so many typos 
it’s going to come with a red pen 
and i’m going to teach a course on 
copy editing 
i don’t care
i’d rather have someone read
my poem about smoking weed 
and jerking off 
than have it stay in my head 
im giving away everyone i was
for the last 5 years
it’s my yearbook 
for my graduation from 
post-graduate adulthood 
i’m real now
my next book 
will be about owning expensive kitchen items, 
my loving, stable relationship
trips to iceland, japan, and peru 
so many people will hate me 
because of my happiness 
i think if people graffiti 
fuck (insert your name)
(insert your name) is probably 
doing something right

white guys 
i miss jeff buckley 
robin williams 
my cousin jay 
all the good white guys
are dead 
all the bad ones 
are reading this right now

real women have curves 
organic mango chunks on my foot
that’s a lana del rey album 
i had a body positive moment
this morning 
after i moved everything around 
in my apartment
trying to see if it would change things
if it would change me
instead of seeing cottage cheese
stretch marks and a fake ID
i had an america ferrerra moment 
i thought
i love myself so much 
i don’t wish there was less of me
so ill eat froyo and cream cheese 
stone fruit and more please 
i want the plate spilling over
like a greek goddess fantasy 
rolls and where would you lose the 3 pounds from? 
i want every bit of you 
every handful pouring out 
please don’t lose anything else

watching shape of you teletubbies in guitar center
everyone is overstimulated and vocal stimming
did you really go on a lesbian date
if she doesn’t text you 
“damn i should’ve kissed you” 
after? 
veronica mars in the bath 
1am washing my face in the dark 
you would’ve kissed me 
but you didn’t 
oliver is asleep on the tule
waiting for me to get in bed
i make the sheets fresh
resetting my bed karma 
he curls up on the heating pad
and falls asleep between my legs 
i wake up and write you a poem 
on the roof
you start to cry
i try to remember the collage i made
i loved looking at it 
under the bright lights at shake shack 
it’s my sister birthday today 
you have the same big 3 
tonight, i’m enough for you 

watch: shape of you teletubbies

ronan and i discovered that you can make the song shape of you about a chicken caesar wrap and/or a burrito and it still makes complete sense. example: 

(imagine you are singing about a chicken ceasar wrap and/or a burrito)

The club isn't the best place to find a lover
So the bar is where I go (mm)
Me and my friends at the table doing shots
Drinking fast and then we talk slow (mm)
Come over and start up a conversation with just me
And trust me I'll give it a chance now (mm)
Take my hand, stop, put Van the Man on the jukebox
And then we start to dance, and now I'm singing like
Girl, you know I want your love
Your love was handmade for somebody like me
Come on now, follow my lead
I may be crazy, don't mind me
Say, boy, let's not talk too much
Grab on my waist and put that body on me
Come on now, follow my lead
Come, come on now, follow my lead, mm
I'm in love with the shape of you
We push and pull like a magnet do
Although my heart is falling too
I'm in love with your body
And last night you were in my room
And now my bedsheets smell like you
Every day discovering something brand new
I'm in love with your body
(Oh-I-oh-I-oh-I-oh-I)
I'm in love with your body
(Oh-I-oh-I-oh-I-oh-I)
I'm in love with your body
(Oh-I-oh-I-oh-I-oh-I)
I'm in love with your body

thanks for reading! love yaaaa <333

xoxo

brooke

i am obviously waking up in bed alone popping zits on my chest and asking my cat to please stop eating the wig that i have placed over my lamp. it is the same color as his orange hair and when he puts his head under the lamp (as he is obsessed with doing) it looks like he has long auburn hair. hey, we have fun!

this morning i am reminded of a line of poetry i wrote after the maybe one one night stand i’ve ever had which is “you’re like a cat - in my arms one moment, gone the next”. i used to only know how to write poetry when it was about sex, and since i am celibate (by choice) since july, i am learning to write about other things, like… grief. isn’t it crazy how that happens… you take the sex away and suddenly all you have is grief. someone should write a book about that!!!

i am experiencing some really painful weeks currently and feeling intense amounts of rejection, which i am being told over and over is god’s protection. and it’s like okay, sure, but y it hurt so bad…

my saturn return started yesterday and i was on the phone with a dear friend, no, FACETIME, and we spoke for about 20 minutes before her kindly revealing it was actually her birthday. i was so caught up in my own bullshit (like starting my fucking saturn return literalllyyyy who cares!!!!) that i forgot it was my friend’s birthday. #perspective

i am trying to accept the pain, need a cigarette (mini ice cream cone) to make me feel better. i started the brand television new show 6 feet under (premiered in 2001) that i am looking forward to spending 63 hours with. every episode starts with someone dying in a crazy way then the rest of the episode is the family who owns this funeral home planning and executing the funeral. it’s also hour long episodes and it’s funny and dark. some call that a dramedy. i yearn for 2000’s television… i was born in the wrong generation. i was supposed to be in the ugly betty/desperate housewives/6 feet under writer’s room. instead i am waking up at 7am to go on a 60 second tiktok show where i walk a dog and have zany banter. (i am so grateful i love my life please continue to cast me as quirky girl who walks dog)

my friend tyler, who is also a pisces and also entering his saturn return told me some really good insight on what this means for us in case you were wondering, or are also going through yours:

this really made me feel empowered with knowledge and i did some grounding work around these intentions/mantras.

yesterday i went to staten island and it was legit amazing. i have been to staten island twice in my life and the first time was also weirdly awesome (i got my hair done by the girls at the paul mitchell cosmetology school). staten island is extremely close and also a completely different world. both times going there i have taken a bus that is not like a new york city bus but like a bus you would take to drive 13 hours to go to tijuana on a mission trip with your church. (not that i would know…)

it has those seats that are really tall and are covered with the 2000’s movie theater/bowling alley carpet and there are USB ports in the seats, which at this point unfortunately, are completely useless unless you need to charge your vibrator which i didn’t have on me so i just sort of sat there with a dead laptop jacking off acoustic style. (kidding).

i took a call on the bus as i am wont to do. say what you will about this behavior, i feel like it is the same as being in a conversation with a person but hate me if you want. you think i give a shit??? well i do, and if i hear you talking shit about me im gonna cry about it for a long long time.

the bus ride ultimately is short. sometimes i wish it were longer. it can be romantic to be on a mostly empty bus driving over bridges you never drive over, looking out the window. POV: your unemployed friend on a friday afternoon.

once we get there, i get off the bus and i am just fully on a random ass road in staten island. and there’s open space where there are just trees and snow. mind you, i’m dressed like this:

i buy some tampons because you know my crazy ass was free bleeding on the bowling alley seats. $4. four dollars!!!! for a box of tampax. unheard of. in new york tampons are like truly $12 minimum. this is when i decide im moving to staten island.

i walk a chill 20 minutes to my destination, and while on the move i take not one but two phone calls. one to discuss the potential all lesbian legally blonde the musical production i plan on bringing to life, and the other, to discuss my sperm donor based comedy show. (tickets here btw…) all in a day’s work.

i sit by the water and it is so peaceful. at the end of the day, i’m just a pisces from california and i need the sea. then i go into the alice austen house, which is a historical landmark owned by the ny parks department to see some lesbian photography from the 1880s and a modern art exhibit called “she sells seashells”, which of course is perfect for a girl like me.

i am early to the party which is to say on time (gay people). i beat the cubbyhole bartenders i am meeting and accidentally sit on a piece of art (cyanotype pillow). i tell the person working there i’m sure we’ve met and she said “yeah idk i see a lot of people, probably” which was humbling and needed. i loved feeling anonymous in staten island.

we got a guided tour from the wonderful kiwi lesbian who runs the place. she told me her kids have off school next week and i thought about what it would be like to be a lesbian from new zealand who runs an art gallery in staten island with children. could that be me some day? first i have to move to new zealand and come back. then my journey begins.

it was beautiful. we saw the seashells alice austen collected, we learned about all the womens only groups we started (in the 1880s thats code for lesbian). she started a cooking group, a women’s bicycling group, and a mechanic group. she was the first woman on staten island to own a car, and her and her friends all loved to work on cars. i imagined a version of grease set in the 1880s with a group of lesbians who love to work on cars while also in like 12 layers of victorian clothes who munch box and all sleep in one bed together.

a wonderful dyke with a mullet took our aura photos. my aura was balanced and soft, mostly pink violet blue and white. ironic, considering those are my favorite colors. it was less bright than the colors i was wearing that day, they were in fact muted. i was told my aura was balanced. it was because i hadn’t looked at my phone for 2 hours (it was dead and charging in the mulleted dyke’s office) (chivalry is not dead).

aura interpretation

blue: you’ll find many blue artists, poets, writers, musicians, philosophers, serious students, spiritual seekers, and people looking for truth, justice and beauty in everything.

violet: magical, original, tends to be unconventional, often has psychic abilities, unusual charisma and charm, the uncommon ability to make their dreams come true or manifest their desires. not especially practical, they tend to prefer to live in a dream world of their own creation.

white: spiritually motivated, the ability to be open and receptive to the divine, or spiritual world. can merge with ALL THAT IS. inner illumination, cosmic wisdom. young children, energy workers and people who meditate intensely. generally, white does not often appear in the auras of adults.

afterward the cubbyhole lesbians and i stepped out onto the beach and they smoked weed while i ate a cookie i had acquired on the street earlier when i had ran into Po, the red teletubby, and was asked to pose for a photo with him and was given a red rose and a couple of sugar cookies. i had low blood sugar and really needed to eat. one of my friends had a burrito in a brown paper bag with the grease forming spots on the bag like a little kid in a cafeteria. i lusted after the burrito but settled for the sugar cookie.

i thought about how before the kiwi lesbian took over the alice austen house, they wouldn’t even acknowledge her queerness or her 50 year romance with gertrude stein. they wouldn’t acknowledge she was even a photographer, and that was her entire thing! i wonder how many queer people have been erased from history by bigoted white men who run the art world. the lesbians became misty eyed hearing of the queer erasure of alice austen, and we all silently thanked the kiwi for bringing her story to light.

i couldn’t help but wonder… if alice austen can find lesbian love in the 1880’s, what’s stopping me, a new age lesbian, from finding a 50 year romance as well? i felt very seen by alice. someone who created lesbian spaces, who was taking photos of other lesbians and capturing their lives, a pisces even (march 17 i asked), a hustler and someone who didn’t listen to the limitations others put on her. they said once she met gertrude, her partner, she slowed down, took less photos, made less groups. maybe that’s why i haven’t met someone, because i’m supposed to take photos and make lesbian spaces. i dont know many lesbians who have lived full lives, especially not those living in the victorian era.

alice lost everything in the stock market crash of 1929. she spent the last years of her life living in a poor house, until a man found the archive of photographs she had donated to an art archive and became obsessed with her work. he found out she was still alive, living in a poor house in staten island. he found her, brought her to a proper retirement home for her last year on earth, and now her legacy lives on.

the stock market crash of 1929 is the same event that caused the formation of alcoholics anonymous, an almost 100 year old fellowship that has helped millions of people get sober through spiritual enlightenment, began just a ferry ride over from where alice was when she entered the poor house.

6 lesbians crammed into a lexus sudan to drop me off at the ferry for my journey home. the police pulled up next to us and over their PA said “girls, what’s happening here,” and we just said “we’re dropping our friend at the ferry!” and they said “be safe” and drove away. even the cops are nicer on staten island.

i sat outside on the ferry, thinking of all the people who immigrated to new york for a better life. i looked at the gold glinting off the statue of liberty’s torch, the sun through her spikes, and cried thinking about all of the people who have come here to pursue their dreams. how many have failed, the few that succeeded.

the ferry trudged through the icy surface of the river and i listened to new york state of mind. i have been missing california so much, wanting so badly to give up and move home, back where i know how things work, where it’s easy and i know my way around. i watched tourists line up on the ledge of the orange ferry, asking their loved ones to take photos of them with the statue of liberty and the new york city skyline. listening to billy joel, i remembered all the snowglobes my dad would bring home to me after his frequent business trips to new york. how many times i cranked the silver wind up to listen to “new york, new york” while i watched the snow fall over the city, imagining living in a place that snows, a place with skyscrapers and godzilla hanging off of them.

the bustle of people getting off the ferry into manhattan makes me feel like i’m getting off a ship that’s come from some land far, far away, entering this new strange city for the first time, trying to make a life for myself. and in a way, i am.

a poem about grief

grief softens the edges 
it sands us down like time 
grief is a slow wave, 
a crash captured
cresting into a C
the white frothy curling,
the cold atlantic. 
grief is a slow mo(u)rning-
hot water with lemon, 
slowly rising to room temperature
the wedge submerged and splintering.
grief slows-
time, 
our hands on the keyboard, 
moments
our eyes had sparkle.
grief is a spectacle 
in a coliseum of one
rewatching the limbs torn 
from limbs in slow motion, 
exiting
as the blood runs 
over the sand.
grief wins most days, 
some it surrenders
to the sea breeze, the cool air
and the white sun peeking through
the ice caps, through the 
horns of liberty 
some days, it's not there at all,
and i miss her. 

i love you!

a couple of announcements…

this tuesday i am starting my 12 week course artist rehab! we will do the entire artist’s way together as well as some of my own activities and crafts. sign up here!

and hosting a comedy show on march 26 called the donor! please come!!!!

ok that’s all :) bye !!!!

love you <3

and for dessert i’ll have strawberries with brown sugar. maybe this whole health kick will last forever! probably not, most days i eat a hot burrito half for lunch and a cold burrito half for dinner (been in my big bud press tote since lunch). hey, it doesn’t make me feel great, not even good! some could even say bad! i love using big words.

today i went to the ymca to do a slut walk, which is a term coined by my friend madison kate. basically we walk around 3-3.5 mph on the treadmill at 11 incline and listen to the sluttiest dirtiest skankiest pop music and basically act like we are ke$ha strutting up and down the belt. when in reality, we are at the ymca and are getting checked out by gross men and 12 year old boys inexplicably running miles on the treadmill.

i like the smell of sweat. i like smelling my own and smelling strangers. the gym is such a fun liminal space. i love texting at the gym.

my friend tyler was texting me while i stretched. this girl next to me was doing the splits and i was like “ok slut” but i literally can and will do the splits at the gym. for some reason when i am at the gym i am like everyone here wants to fuck me. is that true? or am i just the only woman there at 3pm? i would say the gym is the most heterosexual place i go. i basically never think about male desire or the male gaze in my normal life but then i go to the gym and i can feel the testosterone oozing out of their pores and wafting out of their arm and leg pits. remember when our bodies didn’t smell like anything but piss and jam? take me backkkkk.

after the gym i go into the sauna, which is the best place in the world. i actually did a study and the bed stuy ymca is the most quiet place in the entire city. today it was just me and one other girl in there. my locker room shoes are the pink crocs my old babysitter gave me for a mexico mission trip when i was 13. they are probably from the year 2005. #vintage wait im scared that would actually make them vintage (bc vintage is 20 years old+….) #feeloldyet?

i love saying feel old yet??. and legend. and “nevertheless she persisted”, and “what the hell. sure” what are your vocal stims rn legends???! sound off in the comments please!

my peonies are still being shy but every day i trim them and give them more water. they will surely come alive won’t they…any day now…

isn’t it weird how many lives we live? if you dont believe in reincarnation bitch look at a picture of me from five years ago! gay people have the best party trick and its “look at this picture of me when i was straight”.

i think we are born gay (see exhibit A above), then we go back into the closet then we come out again. sometimes we go back in and out a couple times, like the hokey pokey. then you turn yourself around…

remember last week i was in a bad mood? now im in a good one? that’s what they should teach in the schools #nofeelinglastsforever my friend is literally telling me that every day yet any time i’m in a bad mood im like damn this sucks. guess this is the rest of my life!

i always hope happiness lasts. i think it can. my cat has been in the same box for like a week now just hanging out. i move the box around and he moves with it. i put the box in the bathroom when i took a bath so we could hang out. then i put it in my room last night and he slept in it. now i’m writing in the kitchen and he’s right next to me, licking his asshole in the box. if you are depressed and having thoughts your psychiatrist might have to tell to someone, you should absolutely get a cat. i feel like a disney character with a little pet sidekick!

i’m obsessed with him and it’s so good to have someone to kiss all the time. i love how his stomach is so warm right after he wakes up from a nap. to me, that is god. i think god is there, in the warm fur of a cat after a nap.

i used to hate cats like was legitimately afraid of them for years. and now i’m one of those girls showing pictures of my cats to my coworkers like they’re kids photos in my wallet.

also i went to philly this weekend to see my friends and it was DOOOPEEE!!

ok well i wrote some poems this morning, here they are!

everyone is gay and yet no one is 
my straight friend told me all her lesbian friends
are getting boyfriends 
i said that's a recession indicator
she makes $250k so she can be mean to men 
the engaged girlies are doing mukbang 
and the blonde baker mommies are buying gucci
and getting facelifts that could 
buy houses if they could get up 
and walk off your head. 
i'm a class traitor.
trader joe's, smoothies and coffee at home
designer nothing, thrifted cashmere with moth holes
at the neck like hickies 
am i late or 
is everyone else simply early? 
i'm the queen of my own life,
queen of picking up the navy sweats
covered in cat hair 
off the floor
for the fifth day in a row 
queen of the local pharmacy, 
the men selling hats and tank tops blasting 
Bill Withers
it's gonna be a lovely day. 
i've cut the peonies, they're blooming
in the Bushwick penthouse
with the rug faded with sunbeam spots
the pothos takes a bath
every candle, diffuser and potpourri is going
i am paying off parking tickets
thinking about how i went from 
having only a coin purse to my name,
gumballs my only investment
to here 

what if everything had a place?
what if i did?
what if you took me off your shoulders after a long day, 
hung me on the coat rack by the roof
kicked me off into the bamboo racks,
hung me on the key ring, 
emptied my contents on the bed 
and wiped away the crumbs.
take me off, one by one 
drop me into the catch all 
on your nightstand
let me sleep on your face
to block out the morning light
could you wake up, 
slide into me
tie me around your waist 
drink me like morning coffee
delight you awake
for another day 
of stuff and places and people 
bags to hang on backs of doors
boxes to check  
coats to put on and take off 

ok legends, that is all! 

i hope everyone has a reallllly awesome thanksgiving. 
some things to consider... 

11/26 comedy show at off nights at 8:30 
12/1 poetry is gay at boyfriend co-op!! 7:30-9:30 (subscribe to the substack if you havent!) 
12/3 comedy show in bed stuy 
12/4 brooke is hosting a comedy show at bushwick comedy club!! link/poster to come : )
12/7 collage event with brooke at boyfriend co-op!!!  

YAYYYY

love you guys

hey dont be a stranger, ok?

love and light,

madeline brooke

this is a result of not having enough alone time. the reality is, i went to an addison rae themed dance class and i had the time of my life and now i’m paying the price. my entire body has felt so sore ever since and i’ve been promising to myself and others to take a bath for like three days and i’ve only just accomplished it. you know when you’re expecting a guest at 1:30 so you get out of the bath at 1:29 and answer the door in a towel and shower cap? yeaaaah i have a bad case of the mondays.

this weekend i seemingly did nothing and everything. i was in a short film, a music video, no speaking lines. i got into a food fight on camera in press on acrylics and had a sensory nightmare experience. i got lowkey turned on from fingering the raspberry jello. is anyone else in a weird place?

i bought some winter peonies, they are opening up quite nicely (the white ones) but the pink ones are holding tight like a fist. they remind me of myself, i often catch myself with my hand balled up in a fist. would i relax? i need to get a massage but god where do i find the time! i have to make it.

there is such a fine line between caring for others and caring for yourself. i’m split twerking on it. i had domino’s from last night for brunch today. yes that’s brunch! anything can be brunch if you just believe!

i am deeply embarrassed about how much pain i am in from the two hour addison rae dance class i went to. i had so much fun though. i miss being a slut (cheerleader) and always wearing booty shorts and sitting in straddles. i miss all the glitter and girls and the simplicity of being a child virgin. that’s what they dont tell you about losing your virginity, once it’s gone, it’s gone….

jk they actually say that a LOT and it doesn’t mean anything. i think for me it is the metaphorical cherry pop— it’s the hymen that opens up the flood gates (and honey it’s soaking!) to romantic and sexual obsession. i used to have my friend drive me around in her grandma’s turquoise camry so i could get fingered in a hoodie on some guys parents bed that was covered in dog hair. what was that?

was i ever straight? comp het is so weird.

omg im in such a bad mood im going blind. but i looked back on my photos and it turns out i had an amazing comedy show this week!!! yayyyy!!! ahahha. muffin butter was such a success. it reminded me of the unbirthday show (real ones remember!)

i made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins for everyone and even sliced butter on everyone’s muffin. “would you like a muffin? would you like me to butter your muffin?” it was very nice and fun. everyone loved my muffins! honey you’re not the first, certainly not the last!

celibacy is making me weird. i’m bringing sort of a celibate vibe to the comedy show that horny people in the audience are NOT connecting to. i’m talking to my cats like they are real people and watching them play like it’s animal planet and i’ve just hit the bong (i haven’t).

i also read poetry at this new event my friend chesca put on called no signal which was really fun. i read poetry and people drew me while i read!! it was so cool. here are some of the pics.

here is something that made me laugh really hard:

POEM TIME!!!

cornbread 
i wrote down a list of things 
i would never do again 
use other people to hurt myself
was the top of
the list 
you told me that while i ate 
cold chili and crumbling cornbread 
you only do what you know 
someone must have done it to you first 
and they had
in crumbling sheets and sticky mornings
in starbucks bathrooms and in upstairs bedrooms 
sometimes they even sent me home 
with souvenirs— 
sparkly dinosaur stickers, 
paintings of horses, 
purple conversation starters 
i wear orange turtlenecks 
at dinner with my dad 
and eat all the bread on the table 
he is getting married and 
i am supposed to be 
happy 
i cut my cuticles on the toilet and pray 
i say i do not want my cell phone
and i leave it in the uber 
i say i want to slow down 
and i get sick
i find jeans on the street
and bedazzle them 
listening to other people’s addictions 
i have put the bottle down and my sister says
she can’t watch that video of you
without drinking
we could unpack that for a while 
your friends call me 
while i bedazzle the sidewalk jeans 
my stomach grumbles 
i want more cornbread

intervention at the karaoke bar  
where do they do karaoke on thursdays?
the weed catches up to me before
we get in the car
it's a hybrid 
you pass it to me in my blue gloves 
we sit in the red room, 
stools and candlelight 
making new traditions
laughing off the past 
i fall asleep in the car home 
dreaming of the bath 

that's all!!! trying to write more xoxo miss y'all. poetry is gay is tonight at 7:30pm at singer's if anyone wants to come write with us yayyyy see you soon!!! xoxox 

brooke 

i love who i am at this age. i am sitting in my apartment alone on a saturday night blissed out as hell. my new thing is peace and calm, tranquility and serenity. i used to be obsessed with chaos and excitement! now i want everyone to leave me alone and let me enjoy my god damn life in peace!

my life is much easier than it once was, and yet, i find myself nostalgic for little brookie, working her first job in new york city, getting the meanest yelp review of all time and immediately going to a show to do a dramatic reading of it on stage. she is my hero!!!

it is hard to not acknowledge that i am a different person now. sometimes things happen and they change who you are fundamentally. i miss BC brooke. i am now AD brooke. and i’m sure i will be AD again and today will be BC. i am trying to enjoy my body today because i will surely envy it in a few years. i am looking back at pictures of me taking sexy mirror pics when i was 23 and i am so grateful i took them. i need to be taking more nude images of myself.

i am 100 days celibate. it’s not that much but also it’s not nothing. my phone is dryer than hell! and guess what? i am experiencing… peace :)

i used to only know how to write poems about sex and yearning and desire and unrequited love. my mentor/grandma/high school voice coach lucia would say “you’re obsessed with sex right now. you’ll grow out of it”. you know i hate to say but… i told you so…. lucia was so right. of course i am still a sexual deviant (gay) but my focus has… shifted. i guess it’s my saturn return. i am more concerned with things like going to the store for muffin liners and cumin for my chili than i am with say… staying up until 4am with some bitch i met on raya and then going to my restaurant job with 4 hours of sleep. that is lowkey not that fun to me anymore! #truthnuke

i go through periods of time where i bake lots and lots of muffins. i am currently in that era. my roommate recently asked if i am “fattening her up for slaughter”, which i think is a really awesome thing to say. it must be hard when that’s happening to you cause youre like waiiitt… stop… seriously…. but… yum…

i’m a cat mom and i moved to bushwick! it’s bushwickistan now. we have a socialist democratic mayor! everything is going to be fixed now!!!!

zohran is dope and you know when the billionaires and your grandparents are worried, something good is happening to you for once.

i have been bedazzling crazy style. i found these jeans on the street and after a couple days of no one rescuing them, i brought them in and changed the course of their life. they could be in a landfill somewhere, instead they are on my couch, being bedazzled with the word DYKE on the back pocket. orphan annie vibes! and yes, i’m daddy warbucks.

i am also hand typing my favorite recipes onto small pieces of paper that i am going to put into a laminated binder. I haven’t done things like this in so long! i missed BC brooke! my therapist and i have been talking about this concept of “blending”, and how sometimes when i feel big emotions i am “blending” with my child self, instead of experiencing the emotions as adult brooke. we are cultivating the adult brooke. we do things like imagine child brooke is there, maybe i take her for a cinnabon, maybe i wash her hair in the tub, maybe i hold her and tell her she has a beautiful voice.

i think that’s why people have kids, to make it right for their younger selves. then they fuck it up again in new, unique ways. i wonder if i will have kids. the only person i can imagine having kids with is my gay guy best friend nate. our kids would be so sexy and would be little surfer babies with a great sense of style. we could retire in san diego!!!

i went to a straight wedding last weekend and didn’t want to kill myself. i had so much fun! i went to a casino for the first time!!! it was soooo amazing oh my god. i would equate it to a person with adhd taking adderrall for the first time. i was like wait finally… i’m relaxed. every machine was brooke-coded. there was piggy banks and cha-chinging and dice rolling. the craps guy let me roll the dice because i was with a bunch of straight guys from college (i know… switch up for me), and i didn’t want to bet. i spent $1 single dollar on a machine upstairs. i was so sleepy i went to the bathroom to nap on the toilet and when i came out a group of them had already left. this is why you must express your desire… others may have the same one.

but the wedding was so cool. it was my first jewish wedding, i realized. i think they did the horah for 45 minutes i’m not kidding. it was so funny, watching the family perform for the bride and groom (my friend from college evan and his wife rachel!) randomly a brooklyn comedian was also at the wedding bc she’s cousins with rachel (ok small world!) and she told me it’s a jewish tradition to entertain the bride and groom so they perform these little skits which are called “schtiks”, um okay finally know where that word came from alert!! they stepped on the glass, the uncles said blessings that sounded like the sing song prayer chants from all my friends bar mitzvahs. it was awesome. i have been to so many christian weddings it was fun to see everyone so excited and energetic. the band was also amazing, and what i love about weddings these days is they cap off the night with fire pits and s’mores. I LOVE THAT!!!

i smoked weed at the end of the night and got weird and hyper, per usual. oh my god also the day before i got a horrible period and was in the tub smoking weed for like 12 hours straight soo unwell and horrible. i saw a gif of what your body is doing when you are on your period/having cramps and i wont put it here because it is distressing and disturbing and i know children are on here reading. hey kids, it gets worse. but seriously, you can google it. i dont know why god put us through that, maybe to make us more interesting? pain is good for interesting people purposes. but perhaps it would be good to just have peace and be bored.

here are some poems i wrote live at the function the last few weeks:

ALSO NYC: hosting my new show MUFFIN BUTTER this thursday 730pm at singers. presale sold out but tix at door xoxo

xoxoxoxoxox,

always yours

brooke

we said goodbye to maggie’s subaru this morning— they held the plates to their chest with a pair of keys.

“keep a set as a souvenier— your car’s gettin’ crushed”, maggie did an impression of the tow truck man with a thick, brooklyn accent. fuckin’ this, fuckin’ that. frickin frackin, as my parents would say.

we watched the quick hook henchman in a neon yellow tee, dark grey sweats and Timberlands hitch it to the tow truck. it billowed thick dark smoke as it drove down Hart Street for the last time. Romy came out to watch it turn the corner, eating her usual breakfast of turkey bacon on a bagel, squinting at the sun.

“thanks for all the trips to riis!”, I waved like a woman bidding adieu to the unsinkable ship with her handkerchief in the sea breeze.

the tow truck driver gave maggie $300 in $50 bills. it reminded me of all the times people had left little business cards on the windows: CA$H 4 JUNK CARS

i was the last person to drive maggie’s car. i was carsitting when it expired.

i realized this was a moment i needed to document.

“do you have your phone?”, maggie handed it to me, posing frowny faced and giggling, fanning the money. it felt like their car was going off to the metal factory where robots get sent “for parts” in the movie Robots.

maggie stopped fanning for a second: “He used they/them pronouns for me”, I loved the paradox of Brooklyn. where else in the world does a tow truck driver clock your roommate’s nonconforming gender?

i sat outside on the stoop reading my friend amy’s first book first time, long time. she told me she is “sick of being a debut novelist”, i think of going to the korean spa with her and she’d be writing on a notepad, reading from her waterproof kindle.

she always tells me “life is long!”, which now i say constantly. now it’s a line in her book! life is long! i underline all the lines in the book that make me laugh, words i have to look up (palatial), things i know are true about her life that she’s repurposed for her novel. it’s making me see how much of fiction is true. it’s making me want to write fiction (maybe i’ll get in less trouble!)

her novel takes place in LA, the protagonist is swimming in a pool. i imagine my college friend jonathan’s parent’s house, in the valley with a pool overlooking the city. you could actually see stars there. i always forget about stars. i went there in the pandemic once, we swam around in the cold water, talking about our parents’ recent divorces, his swim trunks billowing under the surface.

my mom asks me if i miss my old apartment in LA.

i miss the big orange couch, the swag lamp, the huge closet i had. i don’t miss the back alley where i parked where i swear to god i was hexed once, the time my roommate uninvited me from brunch then told me to “accept volunteers, don’t seek out recruits”, which was mean but was also really good advice.

on tuesday i was on a show with a comedian who is one of the few people who also knew the girl who stayed in my apartment for a month then passed away shortly after. she died in her sleep with a mcdonald’s meal on her chest. “it’s how she would’ve wanted to go”, one of her friends told me. i remember her sitting outside every night with my neighbor, drinking red wine and smoking cigarettes, using the AC unit as a table. i wrote poems about her, listened to her talk about her mom on the couch. her mom invited me to her zoom funeral.

i text one of my other subletters (my LA roommate was often fleeing to his parent’s second home in Mexico), and ask if she still has my orange couch.

“As we speak”, she promptly replies. Every 6-12 months I text her, asking about the couch.

She sends me a photo of someone I’ve never seen before, cross legged and smiling, her phone intertwined in both of her hands. a bedazzled cross hangs above her head, a mostly drank cup of smoothie with a spoon sitting on the coffee table. there is a framed picture of john lennon and yoko ono with a sign that says “WAR IS OVER!”

some of my favorite memories are trying to keep the couch sections from pulling apart, ending up with my butt on the floor between them halfway through the movie.

when i first moved into Hart Street three years ago, I had yet to see a real winter.

after the tow truck passes the pulaski playground, i ask maggie and romy if they took the bus to school. maggie nods.

“where were your bus stops?”, i asked.

“mine was at the end of my street,” maggie told me. i pictured it in my mind, the end of their parent’s cul-de-sac in providence, rhode island. a house they recently sold and moved somewhere smaller “on the other side of the tracks”. maggie hadn’t even grown up at that house, but it was where i imagined they had. a blue house with white trim with a big rainbow flag billowing in the wind upon our thanksgiving arrival. it was a stark contrast to the dark wooden paneled home of their neighbors, carved and painted in green the words “Noah’s Arc”, with a flag of animals boarding an impossibly large, unsinkable ship in two’s.

“so you’d walk?”, I asked, imagining the bus stop where i would walk to, at the end of the street, with my brother wearing shorts year round.

“my dad would drive me actually, he’d sit in the car with me and we’d listen to podcasts in the car”, I wondered. NPR? What podcasts did dad’s listen to?

i thought about amy’s book, where the narrator falls in love with an older radio host, one she’d listened to with her father growing up. i never remember listening to podcasts with my parents, i hardly remember being in the car just us two. mostly they were on the phone. when it was just us two in the car, they would be talking with one of my other siblings on the phone.

and they always were. there were always so many kids, so many activities, so many phone calls to take on the bluetooth, so many opinions on what we should listen to. this song’s too sad. turn something else on. most days when i would get in the car with my dad, if he picked me up, he was “yelling at china”. my parents work in the apparel industry, and produced clothes overseas. often my dad was shouting in clear, slow english at odd hours of the day and night. he’d come home from business trips with bright red and golden envelopes with colorful currency inside them. one year he brought back four samurai swords. my mom was furious. how did you even bring those back?! i pictured them going through the X-Ray machine, nothing to see here, just some weapons for my children.

i mostly spend time in the car with my nanny, nicole. she drove me to cheer practice and we’d get boba tea sometimes. the winter was mild, we’d wear sweatshirts, leggings and uggs, or fuggs. our school was entirely outdoor, something i took for granted. i never had to coexist in the snow, snow was a destination, not a state of being. when the rain cloud appeared i’d wear pajama pants to school— the same ones every day, with little mermaid and flounder printed all over them. my mom threw them away when spring came without my permission. it was her way of cutting the depressive cord. that and forbidding me from watching grey’s anatomy all day in bed, facetiming my college boyfriend between sobs.

i spent a lot of the last year and a half frozen, as maggie put it. so frozen i could hardly exist in the world, let alone this house. i wish it didn’t have to be like that. sometimes you live somewhere long enough you collect bad memories. they live in the walls, in the bathtub, in the corner where you rest your head every night.

then you move.

i think about if i’ll bike by here soon, waiting for a new tenant to walk out, mentioning off hand i used to live here you know, half hoping they’ll invite me in, giving me a tour of the place where i grew up. my mom would do this sometimes near where i grew up: you know there used to be a well in the backyard. once i lost a radio down there. the kids would cock their heads looking at us like “what’s a radio?”

oliver tentatively joins us on the stoop. it’s like he can feel something shifting. i’ve been having nightmares of him escaping— it must be since all of the moving we forget to shut both doors, and he walks downstairs, sniffing the outside air. i usually shoo him out to go back inside, terrified of losing him, plastering printer pages onto every mailbox and telephone pole, begging. $500 reward— any information helps.

i watch him carefully, he doesn’t seem to have any intention of running. and why would he? i give him a perfect life. he’s surrounded by pastels and lesbians for christ’s sake! but some pets are runners, like my sister’s dog maverick. i used to always joke he was suicidal, the moment the front door opened he’d bolt, heading right for the middle of the road.

oliver sniffed all the potted plants, put his head through the railing, stepped one paw over the ledge, then reversed it.

i think about putting him on a leash, bringing him onto the roof of my new home. i wonder if it will be too bright, a roof top with no foliage providing shade.

i imagine the umbrella i will buy to sit under, doing my morning pages. i will print out pages and plaster them on every door i bought this patio set, i’m new, i’m on the fifth floor. please be kind to them. there is currently a black leather couch, rotting in the sun on the roof. i want to clean it up, but i dont know if there are 21 year olds living there, wanting carnage.

maggie, romy, ollie and i head back inside, and go about our days. cardboard boxes pile up, oliver’s black furry bed on top. he looks up at it, wondering where it’s going. he clings to the couch extra hard, trying to take in all the dreaming he has yet to do here.

maggie is saying bye to their subaru 
i’m on the stoop
running my oatmilk dry
for the final time 
humming bavehoven’s “often”
you’re family / and that’s lost to me / often 
my friend wrote a book
a softball hit me flat in the foot
a man asked if i was ok
i said yes, and blinked away tears
like a child 
alone 
i can think
maybe that’s why i’m always
surrounded
i had a dream i kissed
king princess
it felt like kissing a boy
she wouldn’t let my tongue in 
the street is paved with gold    en flowers 
they’re dressed like fall
it’s hard to say 
what time feels like 
anymore 
they lay on flatbeds of trucks,
on hoods of hondas 
passive, wilting, able 
change
is the only constant 
i miss my bike 
i miss my mom 
the idea of her 
i miss my childhood
i wish i could redo it 
with what i know now 
gino comes out for a smoke 
he mouths the words
good morning 
no sound comes out 
he hasn’t looked at me the same
since he saw me
kissing in my robe
morning breath 
her keys jangling
down the stairs 
i wish there was a man 
who didn’t want 
to have 
his way 
with me 
i watched a tiktok clip
of margaret qualley asking 
brad pitt 
to give him road head 
he asked for some ID
ma’am – are you old enough 
to please me? 
all the comments
were about her
armpit hair
sometimes i feel 
like i live in an entirely different planet– 
then a man follows me
on his electric postmates bike– 
begging me for 5 minutes
come on five minutes
i can’t just have five minutes?
why? why not???
he begs like a child
wanting more screen time 
on his iPad
bluey, blue hair, blue balls,
does anyone know their son? 
no
no
no
by the time we make it to 
the gentrified mexican food
(with red cabbage and
cold cheese in their “burritas”)
we are both upset,
opting for the hybrid option
the glassed-in patio
like dolls
behind a 
plastic shield
she tells me 
her doctor told her
she has a big forehead
i don’t think men 
should be 
allowed
to be 
plastic surgeons 
we used to do bake sales
for smile train–
kids with cleft palates–
like annie next door. 
doctors save lives
yet here you are–
your cheeks are uneven, 
your mouth droops to the left, 
your forehead is too big 
how many things can be wrong with a woman 
before we find one thing wrong
with a man? 
i’m gonna need to see some   ID
you in your white   coat 
running an hour late
no handshake 
you, my neighbor
three years in 
you keep dressing like that 
i’m gonna have to ask you on a date  
kissing in my robe 
morning breath
her keys jangling down the stairs 
i hide in the doorway 
like an earthquake 
am i better off
closer to gold 
paved streets
where i can be 
what you want 
me 
to be? 
the subaru spills out dark, 
thick smoke 
on its final 
drive down hart street 

that's all <3 thank you for reading <3 i love you 

oh buy pig zine 2 please! i worked really hard on it :) 

p.s. reply and update me? what's going on with you. would love to hear anything. 

p.p.s.also go read amy's book! 

forever and always, 

brooke 

it’s a place i go once a year before the new york poetry festival where i make an almost 100 page full color magazine and act like everyone is forcing me to do it with a gun to my head.

tonight i am taking the night off. i was stressed out waiting outside in the heat at millie’s apartment (she fell asleep), and when i got inside i took a hit of their pipe and then felt relaxed.

i feel like my dad, age 27, starting a business with my mom and getting high to numb the nausea.

i look in the mirror of honeymoon coffee like i’m a romantic protagonist in a movie

“this is fun brooke. you’re supposed to be having fun”

i asked my friend ava if she wanted to help with the zine and she said

i’m not my best self when i’m working. i worry i’m turning into my dad. i worry i’m turning into my mom. i worry i’m turning into my mom’s mom and my dad’s dad and it’s all true.

one time i got a typewriter poem in london from a busker there and i posted it on my story and my grandma replied to my story (before my mom made me block my entire family on social media) and sent the poem back with edits and notes. i said this actually wasn’t my writing but thanks.

my grandma wrote a poem about me when i was a baby and it was like a whole thing and now i write so many poems it annoys me and my room is filled with loose leaf poetry. i wish i was organized, maybe i’d be a better artist.

i always think about that scene in yours mine & ours where the kids try to break up the parents (classic) (every teen movie is about getting your parents to get married or get divorced) and the kids tell the dad it’s a good idea to organize the mom’s art space and she comes back and loses her mind because there is “order” to her “chaos” when in reality, her chaos is her order. that’s what i would tell my dad when he told me i should go on teen hoarders.

i am moving next month and i’m so sad. i already know i’m gonna wake up in my new room and forget where i am like a kid on vacation. but all good things must come to an end. and sometimes good things fall apart so great things can come together.

here’s a poem i wrote during my psychiatry appt:

hope to see you at the zine launch thursday and if not just know i want ur ass dead.

jk but seriously come

xoxo

brooke

ps we have $10 tix at door that dont include zine if you wana still come thru

it’s spring! everything is in the air! dandelion seeds fly in the wind while neighbors trauma dump at the citi bike station and we are all desperately trying to resell our hideous last season thrifted clothes with sweat and period stains.

i sold one pair of blue gogo boots for $10 store credit then spent $60 immediately on new stuff. instead of selling my clothes i donated it hansel and gretel style all over the fences of bushwick. go find my bleach stained big bud press pants! they’re somewhere!

the air outside feels so good. i walked to the park this morning to do my morning pages at the chess tables and didn’t bring my phone. i half expected everyone to get really worried and put out a missing persons report but it was actually fine. i had no texts when i got home. i am rediscovering the joy of writing poetry while i’m high on weed in my room alone at night. my cat is turning 5 on thursday and yesterday i woke up to him perched on the dresser in the hall (which he never does) and when i picked him up he had a string of pink tinsel hanging out of his asshole with three poops hanging off it like a pearl necklace. how romantic.

i am emerging from a dark cloud that lasted for about a year and a half and finding joy again. finding funny! i was looking through my camera roll for my name so i could find crazy text messages people sent me so i could make blackout poetry of them. it turns out, most of the things that came up were actually really nice and it totally turned around my mood. i also saw some old tweets that made me laugh really hard. this is from my friend tyler’s substack which always cracks me up. this made me so happy and made me miss when the submarine was the biggest of my worries.

this tweet of mine also made me laugh. it’s so much better that there’s only 6 likes as well.

i have a crush for the first time in deeply so long. i literally haven’t had a fling since the summer of 2023 and that basically ruined me. it’s so annoying that people who hurt my feelings are in whole ass relationships but it’s cool i’m vibing with my cat and making collages and i now have favorite porn stars which i’m sure is horrifying to my mom. sorry queen!

something happened to me which was so hard, i discovered my two favorite porn stars have a video together and watched it and it was sooooo bad. one of them was like moaning crazy porn style and she didn’t seem like herself. it made me sad, to see her acting so far from the character of hers i know and love. i wonder if porn stars have passion porn projects then work porn projects. like i’ll fuck this guy in the pig mask because it pays but what i’m really passionate about is the lesbian 3some work with my two close friends. what do porn stars do when they age out? do they direct?

another tragedy is that my bike was stolen over the weekend. please dont victim blame me— i had so many men respond to my story asking if i locked my bike up. do you think i’m an idiot? of course it was locked! i live in the baddest city in the world, of course there is the technology to steal my bike!!

my dear friend ricky gave me this bike about 3 years ago when i was first living in new york and was working at walter’s. she was perfect— lightweight, painted turquoise, had red pedals (redals), and a little phone mount. i rode her to work every day at walter’s, about 11 minutes there and back and when it rained and snowed i’d take the bus. i rode her across the williamsburg and brooklyn bridge, to the lesbian party, to countless shows and readings, listened to so many albums and songs on her, namely every chappell roan single as they dropped over and over on repeat. troye sivan, addison rae, lady gaga, all the pop divas helped me get where i needed to go.

i feel so nostalgic about it all. i’m moving out of my apartment in august after 3 years of being here and the change is making me feel so crazy. to lose my bike on top of it all? i’m terrified! i have such a hard time imagining the future, but when i look back on the past, it is always fondly. why do we look forward with such dread and back with such sweetness? i want to look to tomorrow sweetly, without fear.

RIP my bike 2022-2025

here are some photos/notes in my phone i found by searching “bike”

i love you, that’s all <3

brooke

on the walk to the restaurant, i was practicing my french accent, rehearsing to be a french girl eating alone, the only kind of person in my mind who is allowed to eat at a restaurant alone and have it be chic, not sad. ahh oui. je m’apelle brooke. i am from bordeaux, it is a small city outside of paris… oui oui baguette. bisoui!

i once met a french guy and i said to him oui oui baguette! and he said to me in a thick, angry french accent why would you say zis to me? zat is like if i said yes yes cheesebuerger, it makes no sense! i laughed and i laughed. yes yes cheeseburger!! that is sooo american.

as i was about to walk in, i heard someone yell my name. i squinted, who are you!! i yelled. it was my friend taylor! she crossed the street and we talked. i sheepishly told her i was going to eat alone. taylor always knows the coolest restaurants and is someone who’d describe herself as a “foodie” so I knew she’d understand. we updated each other on our cats, and she told me about the chef who love bombed her. we’ve all been there… we promise to hang out soon and i resist the urge to invite her with me.

you know when you walk into a restaurant for the first time and it’s like— so what’s y’all’s whole thing? is there a host? is it a seat yourself situation (it almost never is)? then they sort of expect you to know who is the host vs. the runner vs. the servers vs. bartender. it’s like can you have a sign cause now i’m just alone in your restaurant looking dumb and sexy (anyone want me??)

being alone in a restaurant is sort of the ultimate test for if you can make decisions for yourself. inside or outside? pomodoro or ragu? dessert or no? i went to the patio to contemplate, then came back inside. ummmm. outside? my server did not care, he just wanted me to make a choice. right after i got outside, a sexy looking masc and their femme walked back, asking to sit on the same side of the table. oh, love… how naive. i did a double take, the masc looked like my ex if she had lost weight and got neck tattoos, their faces were very similar. i imagined it was me, in a past life. sitting next to my masc, spending her money, ordering two $12 cherry sodas. there was another couple across the way, and after feeling the cold air on my body and watching these hot lesbians canoodle over pasta, i asked my server if it would fuck up his sections to go inside. lemme check… but probably not. a minute later he was back, and we carried my stuff together to the inside table. so sorry! thank you again.

just don’t do it again. i saluted, waiting for my oxtail pasta.

sitting in this italian restaurant reminded me of being on dates with my ex, trying to impress her with how mature and adult i was, despite being 23. i picked out this amazing italian place, candlelit and everything. and i made you this collaged poem that you will surely stick in a drawer in your kitchen.

it made me sort of sad to be at a restaurant i have a joke with my friend sophia about how i never have a hot meal. i need to start doing that. i’m always eating a cold sandwich walking from the subway platform, housing grocery store sushi before my next activity.

almost immediately after sitting down, a windswept woman with long, grey hair walks in asking in a beautiful french accent, if there’s jazz tonight. she sits at the two-top next to me, both of us facing what would soon be a jazz trio.

i come here when i dont have food in the fridge, she told me. she ordered the special, oxtail over a “swamp” of risotto. she told me about how she was living in montreal then bought a car and decided to drive across the country, which she did twice before accidentally having a kid. Now her kid is now 9 (3rd grade) and they live a block from his dad. she was so chic, a single mother, a yoga studio manager, eating alone on a rainy night to see jazz.

she warned me the tiramisu was too sweet, something i honestly probably would’ve liked, but i had a vision of the chocolate chip place and bakes in my fridge. as i left she asked me if i’d want to host a poetry event at her yoga studio. oui oui baguette!!!

i enjoyed the walk home, listening to songs i like and singing them out loud on the street. one of my favorite things about new york is people singing out loud while they walk, run, and bike. we dont have cars, but we still need to sing.

i ran myself a bath and made three cookies with milk and brought them to the bath with me.

PAT POEM
the person i was looking for left
i’m too tired to have charisma right now 
the hottest 
thing you can be is a mystery 
ROYGBitch 
my pussy smells like banana bread 
i told a doctor my pussy was so wet should i go to the hospital 
she said no you’re probably good 
unless you get BV often 
i said no i was just flirting 
i don’t have BV
my truest friend at the lesbian party 
is the guy who makes me quesadillas
POV: you’re inside the taco truck 
he took our photo and we all laughed 
seeing someone’s perspective of us 
ordering steak quesadillas and being so small 
my cat is waiting for me at home 
i pull so many reverse cards i think it’s a mistake
but with tarot there are no mistakes… 
romy is getting negged by femmes  
i’m getting rejected by mascs 
order has been restored 
i peed and my stomach 
still hurts 
maybe i do have BV
it’s hard to take someone seriously
with yellow nails and a straw fedora
but here i am, tuning into rupaul’s drag race as always 
cat asleep on my tarot pull,
there is no better feeling 
than known 
why is it so much easier to love
myself from the past? 
what about now? 

charging my vibrators 
if i was horny enough 
i’d let anyone do just about
anything to me
i’m starting to understand 
the bible 
eating mac n cheese in bed
is a victimless crime 
you have to live to write
but i'm just scraping by 
everyone using scissors and glue
has been through something 
my cat opens the door with his paw
to the bathroom when i’m peeing 
my dog growing up used to 
open the back door by jumping up
on the handle 
his name was french for boyfriend
i love boys when they’re pets
not animals 

that’s all! i love you!

come to comedy is gay on may 21 at the standard!!!

xoxoxox yours forever,

brooke

listening to white boy reggae and connecting with my roots. when i was in college i took a surfing class for college credit. have you ever had a professor named frisco with a sublime sun tattoo on his knee and “hakuna” and “matata” tattooed on his feet? i didn’t think so. i made out with my other surf instructor after a beach bonfire in my volkswagen passat after he showed me his song “pistachio icecream” on bandcamp. he was about 30 and i was 18. i can’t imagine how many underage beach bonfire make outs he’d had.

on the days when the waves weren’t good for surfing we would go boogie boarding and i’d take off my wetsuit and roll around in the sand. after I’d go with my friend and watch her drink beer flights with her fake columbian ID and wonder when I’d have friends. my year long stint living in san diego was amazing since i’m pisces, but weird because i was closeted the whole time and actively attending church alone every sunday.

everyone i encountered was related to the church or the military. something about being closet to the sea made us also close to naval bases… my ex-best friend’s ex boyfriend’s dad was rumored to be in THE seal team 6. he said his dad personally killed osama bin laden. he also apparently fucked his friend’s mom in high school. it was a weird year. people don’t talk about how conservative california is! it’s the thing where it’s so left it’s right, one day you’re drinking chlorophyll water and the next you’re protesting outside of planned parenthood. one day you’re paddling out to hang 10, the next you’re in the top 10 of most evil CEOs. almond parenthood is a slippery slope.

i miss california more as a concept than as an actual place. i went this year for my birthday, one of my only friends i met during my year at san diego state was getting married on my birthday and i had committed to going. we went to greece together this summer as a sort of rumspringa before she got married. ironically, we went to a wedding in rome at the beginning of our trip, adding to my long list of weddings i’ve been attending as of late.

I arrived about 3 hours early for photos but the photographer took one look at me and said: oh you’re staying FAR from my christian lens. there is something about my aesthetic that is the actual anti-christ to wedding photographers. no one is supposed to stand out, just the bride! GET OUT OF MY SHOT, DYKE!

the bridal party sang happy birthday for me in 8 part harmony while i took digital pictures of them. i was going to be a bridesmaid but my friend demoted me to typewriter poet after saying she felt too bad to make me wear nude heels and shave my armpits. so i wore electric blue fluevogs, a lilac gown, donned hairy armpits and a vintage Hermes typewriter. i felt safe, and well rested, because instead of waking up at 7am to get my hair and makeup done by a straight girl who didn’t get my vision, i spent the morning with my gay guy best friend. we started the morning swimming in the ocean and walking around the farmer’s market barefoot and eating west african food and lukewarm crepes, watching adult blonde men drink seamoss gel and cbd lemonade.

i barely knew anybody so i spent most of my time taking pictures of the flower girls, remembering when i was small enough to throw petals on the floor without manic pixie dream girl accusations. i found a group of renfaire looking adults and confidently walked up saying “i found the alt people!” they did not get it or like it.

i felt very lonely and strange going into the ceremony, realizing the only people i knew would be on stage the whole time. i sat next to a stranger and cried under my dollar store sunglasses, luckily, not the only one crying about the passage of time.

when you have seen someone through half a dozen scary boyfriends, watching them have a nice, normal man promise to take care of your friend forever, is a huge relief. it’s also so weird to be sitting there, actively turning 27, with no prospects for marriage, or even love that doesn’t also qualify as emotional torture. am i doing something wrong?

i found solace in the bride’s nephew’s weed pen, taking a hit outside of the spaghetti buffet and after, filling my plate with such a hefty helping of seconds my paper plate bent in half.

i did catch the bouquet. it wasn’t hard, most of the girls were either married or too polite to fight for the flowers. i am, like at most weddings, furthest from being married, but i think that’s who should get the bouquet! the person who is never getting flowers bought for! i paraded around the mostly empty dance floor, bragging about my new toy. they rolled their eyes, knowing they were already ring shopping and having missionary style sex.

i was introduced to the guncles (gay uncles), who live in minnesota and “love to be out in the cold together” and showed me pictures of them ice skating. we all coincidentally, were wearing lavender, and i heard their life story and wrote a poem for them. it was the first time i felt normal all night, and like a beautiful omen for the following year. i may not be on this path, but i am on my path.

while in town, i stayed with my bestie since i was a little kid, nate, and his family. growing up i would spend weeks in the summer at a time living with his family. while my parents were caught up in the social politics of baseball little league, i was learning how to wake surf, listening to bangerz and eating stawberry poptarts (we didn’t keep high fructose corn syrup in the house… or gluten).

his parents are like second parents to me, and him and his sister are like siblings to me. we all fight and tease each other , then make up to go swim in the ocean at sunset. life there is pretty sweet.

it’s so strange to go to the most beautiful place on earth and still be wracked with traumatic memories of the past. what do you mean the worst year of my life was spent on beaches in san diego? what do you mean i experienced religious indoctrination 30 minutes away from where Harvey Milk once lived? how can you be depressed in the eternal sun? well honey, i found a way.

i am learning how to be happy in the cold. it’s so amazing to see the way new yorkers flock to the park in droves for the first day of sun, only to be whipped by the wind a few hours later, all fleeing back to their space heaters and overpriced apartments. but a light! at the end of the tunnel! those two hours of vitamin D will keep this city running for weeks.

for a long time i felt ashamed when people said i was “so california”, i didn’t even know what it meant! in california i almost never met any new yorkers, or east coasters. everyone there is from a different part of california, the west coast, colorado, texas, or somewhere in the midwest. obviously there are exceptions, but everyone there is going for the cali lifestyle.

almost 3 years in, i finally get it. i am a california girl at my core, but new york is wearing off on me. i feel calloused, not enough to not feel the pain, just enough to be able to play guitar without it hurting. i like to see the daffodils pop up at the beginning of summer, share in the shared struggle of 4pm darkness in the winter. i loved my life in california, but when i miss it, i am mostly aching for parts that are no longer there.

the little girl, swimming in a costco rainbow one piece, sharing a dinosaur floatie with her sister. a pigtailed blondie, wearing an oversized life jacket, learning to love cold water, learning how to swim. a sunkissed, tie-dye clad diva in her mom’s sunglasses, pouting for the camera with her older cousin.

i yearn for the fresh cut grass of a front yard, the smell of barbecue in the backyard, the safety of a big couch and a fireplace. waking up to my dad playing easy by the commodores on the piano, sitting in a grassy sunbeam with my dog, driving through grassy hills and smelling eucalyptus, staying up to see the stars. eating otter pops at swim meets, cup o noodles at my brother’s baseball games, being barefoot, always slathered in sunscreen, drenched in that unmistakable smell of sun and summer.

the home i grew up in has been demolished, rebuilt and sold.

my parents divorced, my mom moved to texas, my dad moved to his dad’s. the quirky differences in me and my siblings have led us to completely different lives, scattered across the coasts.

the home i’m constantly sick for isn’t there, and i can’t get on a plane and visit.

all i can do is listen to the beach boys in my bedroom, trying to share a touch of that california girl’s innocence, dreaming of a life living in a far off place called new york city, where the yellow taxis never stop honking and stars dazzle under stage lights.

friday the 13th (guncle poem) 
in the gay world, friday the 13th is good luck. 
i met you-- by the hand that taught me to feed you 
a golden ticket and a night of elegance, 
and we've been at it for pretty much ever. 
a moment with those eyes,
a moment with your smile,
i could see our future stretching out for 
miles upon miles.
i was a virgin for you--  starfished in my little boxers
and tee, laying it all out in the white night. 
then it was June, trimming stems and pulling leaves 
for a floral full color spectrum.
I promised to make you laugh every day, 
mostly at my expense. 
and I do, and you do, too. 

phone call with my canadian best friend
i’ve seen all the videos on the feminist porn site
she has a mitski tattoo on her pussy 
and a land acknowledgement in her bio 
my only crush in town i’m pretty sure is straight 
i’m pretty sure she has a boyfriend 
but she’s the only one i wanna fuck 
i’m just gonna hold out 
i need to learn how to respect women 
she has the biggest tits i’ve ever seen 
but she’s unassuming 
i’m about to go jork my peanits 
on lenape territory 
this girl i ghosted 
i made out with in a cage at a rave 
but then i found out she was 19 
i saw her today picking up takeout from el taco 
and i was like 
i guess she’s 20 now
she was picking up food for a guy 
and i was like 
that tracks 

porn 
it smells like hashbrowns downstairs
time to tell maggie about 
the australian nurse with 8 inches of cleavage
and no moral issue with having an affair
with her braindead patient 
they are naked, having post-coma sex 
while the mourning wife is in the food court
which i imagine is the kitchen of the airbnb 
they are filming in 
some days i experiment with penis
in the shot 
let's be bicurious in the other direction 
we're so left it's right, 
the transmascs at the lesbian co-op 
are into men now, 
i'm old school cause i stopped
hooking up with guys 
is love free? is anything? 
i got an email that the economy is crashing
from my gay financial adviser 
when i am listening to bob marley 
i can pretend i am a child before
the housing crisis, 
playing super mario brothers
in the back seat
driving to florida with my cousins 

freelance
i’m always peeing on a work call 
call me old fashioned 
but i love the smell of weed 
i hate when it rains 
but i love when it snows 
i’m going to be 
so normal 
to my daughter
she never falls 
in love with 
a crazy freak 

come to my solo show!! wednesday 4/9 in ASTORIA QUEENS MAMA!! tickets here

YAYYYY

xoxoxooxoxoxo forever and ever,

brookie cookie

my mom called me this morning to tell me how crowded church was (isn’t that a good thing?) “Brooke— I had to park in the baseball lot, and I guarantee these people won’t be here come February!”

I went to Trader Joe’s on New Year’s Eve and had flashbacks to 2020— lines around the store, a sore-armed employee carrying around a Coachella-esque totem stating “Line Starts Here”, here being the cheese fridge in the back of the store. Checking out, I expressed my sympathy to the bagger: "Well dont come Thursday”, she warned me.

For a moment, I thought she’d had plans to do a Trader Joe’s shoot out, but then she clarified “All those resolution people”.

I imagined the resolutioners, fighting tooth and nail for the last bag of Tuscan kale. It’s MINE! I need it for my dense bean salad!

I find the resolutions endearing, delightful. How wonderful is it that we have a day where everyone decides to look within, and look around, and say, hmmm, maybe things can be different! Even if it just lasts until January 31st.

One of my best friends called me this morning and told me he’s 5 days sober. I think I have a little alcohol problem. This is the friend I’m often cheersing crunch wrap supremes with at 2am while he’s drunk and I’m stoned. The first few nights I couldn’t sleep, but now I feel amazing! It was nice to see him so chipper, full of good ideas. I’m starting a new business, he told me, typing away on his computer like a man with a plan. I lamented how sore I was— fishing for inquiries. Finally, I offered my own update.

What’s new with me? Well I went climbing yesterday. My wrists are so sore I feel like I just finger banged an entire cheerleading squad. Then I did bikram yoga. It’s like a thousand degrees in there. I was quaking the entire time. I sweat so much it’s like I molted my skin, like a rattle snake.

He’s hardly paying attention. He’s too busy making new streams of income.

I did a comedy show on New Year’s Eve, Jenny Gorelick’s “Best New Year’s Ever”, which was so fun. I love a party show. Every comedian did 2 minutes*, their favorite joke from 2024. Everyone was horny and full of hope, still not nursing the morning after hangover, recalling their failed attempts at midnight kisses and not mixing liquors. I walked into a sea of straight people wearing black and white in my redemption tutu. I wore my pink petticoat tutu for the first time last new years, which was a rock bottom for me. I had to give her a second chance.

*or ran the light and did 5, like me

First of all, last NYE I had a bob. Everyone was telling me I looked like Joan Jett, which is not what I was going for at all. I don’t know what I was going for. I was aimless, I was sick. I had a British girl in town visiting me to celebrate the holiday, and by the time she flew to meet me she’d already met someone else. We kissed at midnight since the flight was so expensive, but she spent the night at my party texting the other girl. My word for the year was standards, I decided I deserve better than this, but for tonight, it will be just fine.

My roommates and I made a time capsule in 2024. We decorated a big glass jug with gold and silver stickers and ribbon and tossed in letters, polaroids, and a full head of my roommate’s hair. Before we went out for the night, Maggie and I dug through the letters and tinsel, and Oliver went nuts with this golden string. I think he swallowed a small strand, which may explain the sparkly hair ball that turned up on my roommates rug.

My letter starts with “Heyyyy legend. Do you still say that?” I laughed, I love myself from last year. I wish she could see me now! I once wrote a letter to my 18 year old self from my 8th grade self and I wrote in it “I hope you have a boyfriend and you guys have you know… done it ;)” I read it in my senior English class, blushing. “Oh Brooke, you are so blushing right now. I know you too well.” I got my own ass.

I wrote in my letter that I wanted to feel big and not worry about making others feel small. That I’m a “catch, a sexy minx, and a creative tycoon”. I’m astonished at my confidence in my future self yet the insecurity in me during that present moment, accepting long distance crumbs and mediocre sex. Why didn’t I kick this bloke out of my house? Why did I let someone into my home that didn’t love me anymore? Why did I cut all my hair off?

Maggie gives us a great exercise for New Years, a meaningful holiday for them, and asks us for our “Word of the Year”. I looked around at all ways I was allowing myself to be treated. I decided on standards.

In 2024, I stopped dating because my standards got too high. I got less and less attracted to mean masc with sneaky racks and got right with God. I got a cat and realized I didn’t need to sleep with someone who resented me, I had unconditional love already with Oliver. And he loves Desperate Housewives as much as me. He likes Bree the best, since they both have orange hair (but Oliver’s is natural).

I ended up throwing events at The Standard Hotel, and started working with an incredible therapist who has changed my life, his middle name, strangely, is Standard.

These words, they have power! What you speak for yourself comes true! I am a creative tycoon, a sexy minx, a total catch. Say it enough and it’s true! This works for negative self talk too. I am in the process of untangling the negative thoughts in my brain and finding where they come from, who they come from, and cutting their life lines.

My word for this year? True Love. My letter from 2024 had hopes for a partner I was truly a good match with, and while that hasn’t happened yet, maybe this is the year it does. I’m making space for True Love. I made a candle for my night stand I can light when I am wishing I had it, trusting it will come soon. I got a queen sized bed and new sheets, making space. I know you’re supposed to make room in your closet for a new person, but I’m an eccentric lesbian in New York City, I dont have the closet space to spare. But maybe I’ll start with a toothbrush in a cup, on my shelf, waiting for True Love’s kiss.

poemme time

i used to be 17 
the girls with low rise jeans and 
zip up hoodies don’t have wallets 
but ride the train just the same 
tap to pay with their parents cards
free orthodontics 
silver hoops 
she’s throwing up outside the door 
swallow it cause 12s there 
the cops will drive you home 
does anyone have water? 
dude we need fucking water 
their jeans drag on the floor like mine 
they wear uggs like i did 
we are living in circles and cycles 
bro i think i'm asexual i dont fuck with men or women 
didn't you get with simon? 
you guys were hooking up in the bathroom and we were outside freestyling 
i wonder what they're drinking 
we had UV blue and mango svedka
do city girls drink cosmopolitans? 
do they steal smirnoff too?  
i yawn, like a mother waiting up 
for her daughters,
frozen with the night 
it’s past curfew but my mom 
just wants me home safe 
i watch them, wanting to put 
my coat around their shoulders 
they wobble off at essex-delancey
getting back their land legs 
i wonder if they sing 
dancing queen 
and think 
this song's about me 

one night stand 
i keep my cat treats
and my vibrator
in the same drawer
that has to be a poem,
right? 

saddest 6 word story
woody allen
stoop sale 
january 4th

announcements :)

poetry is gay is tomorrow 1/6! come write with us! :)

also follow my new instagram account lesbian hands :)

that’s all <3 i love you!

reply or comment with your new year’s resolutions! you got this legends!!

xoxox,

Brooke

if you’re in NYC I am teaching two creativity workshops in Jan/Feb in Bushwick! if interested please fill out this form

Adult Creativity Workshop led by Brooke Finegold at Cafe Ornithology

This workshop is aimed at getting in touch with your creativity and inner artist. In these three week courses we will be exploring your creativity through journaling prompts, poetry, collaging, crafting, drawing, inner child work, and community.

Section A: Sundays January 12, 19, and 26 2-4:30pm

Section B: Sundays February 9, 16, and 23 2-4:30pm

Cost: $115-185

i am currently on my flight back to NYC sitting next to an old high school classmate of mine. i ran into his family walking the ICONIC lafayette reservoir the day after christmas, or as my brother calls it “the superbowl for almond moms”, and here i am, on the flight next to him.

he tells me his mom loved that i referred to him and his family as “legends” and “how nice it is, to call us legends”. we used to go to the same church. he was a football player and i was a cheerleader, can i make it anymore obvious? within the first few minutes of sitting down i’d already pulled up his entire birth chart (aries, libra, capricorn). we discussed what our involvement was with the church still. i told him i didn’t go after coming out which he said was “valid” and said it “must be hard to be gay… obviously”. but in this day and age, it is refreshing to hear someone validate that it’s hard— cause it is! it’s gotten a lot better #itgetsbetter, but still. i was talking with my friend ryan at the Harvey Milk terminal at SFO (my happy place), and we were joking how for straight people, there’s plenty of fish in the sea. but for gay people …. it’s more like a lake. and some years it doesn’t rain… so it’s more like a puddle. and there aren’t that many fish (that you haven’t already fucked, or share an ex with).

in our shared exit row, we both admit to reading in public to impress girls. he is reading a book called “guns, germs, and steel” and i am reading “girl, interrupted”

i tell him, “the two genders”, holding the two next to each other, he laughs.

we come up with a dating show idea, where i sit aisle and he sits window and a bisexual girl sits middle seat and we have to fight over her.

i was watching a tiktok this morning of a lesbian’s “year in dating recap” which included 22 girls, 5 of them being “straight”. i thought about making one but it would be sooooo sad.

i had a friend tell me she went on 30 first dates before meeting her girlfriend and told me she’d been keeping track of all of them in a note in her phone with the format:

name - how they met - how many dates - where - outcome

it inspired me to also put in the work. i have been keeping a list in my phone of every date i have been on since being single (january of last year)

pretty much all of them look like

hannah - hinge - 1 date at singer’s - mutual ghost

i really need to get laid soon. my last night sleeping at my dad’s house for christmas i was having sesbian lex dreams all night. i had a dream i hooked up with my tiktok crush in her black jeep wrangler that had been turned into a hot tub. how am i single? my imagination is so sexy. i also dreamt one of my best friends confessed her love for me and we started to date. then i dreamt i hooked up with my cousin, who is a gay guy and a full grown adult my mom’s age. in my dream i was like “damn, those southern roots run deep. even if i’m gay— i’m still fucking my cousin!” a gay guy and a lesbian having sex is the gayest thing i can think of honestly. that’s my new fav sexual taboo.

my aisle mate on the flight is knee deep into highlighting guns, germs and steel and i am, as usual, listening to fleet foxes and working on my little writing. he told me that he goes to a church in manhattan where there are “lots of cute girls”, and i nudge him and say “wife material!”. we wonder who will get married next. my dad asked me and my siblings out of the 3 of us unmarried who will be next. i sit there with my siblings and laugh. we have no idea. my brother jake, is 24 and has never had a serious girlfriend, i’m almost 27 and also have never had a serious girlfriend, and my little sibling enzo is 20, never been in a relationship. hmm i wonder if my parents have had an impact on that at all. oh well! at least they have one kid on the normal love and life track. really takes the heat off us.

while home we were always trying to decide on a “Family Movie” which on christmas eve we decided was Borat. we attempted to watch Borat 2 a couple days later and were all sorely disappointed.

it was dad christmas, which is to say, the dishes were left over night ever night and everything’s stuff was getting lost left and right. we were also having a lot of “dad dinners” which is like a girl dinner but the divorced dad version where he doesn’t really have cohesive meals so you eat a cold steak, blueberries and half a red onion for dinner. my dad has 3 bathrooms in his house and only one has hand soap. and the whole house was sharing one tube of toothpaste. #dadchristmas

we called my mom on christmas and she was like: “it’s christmas and you didn’t go to church AND you watched borat?!!” say what you will about dad christmas… it’s chill. pajamas all week, no sunday’s best. i do feel sick from only eating meat for a week but i definitely relaxed.

mom christmas is more structured, more stable. like on christmas eve my dad turned to me and said “did you want anything for christmas?” he hadn’t gotten gifts for anyone. he said “what— it’s not like you got me anything!?” but i had. i wrote him a poem and framed it, and got him a cook book and a cook book stand from Williams-Sonoma ($50!!!!!!) i was cute as fuck this year. i am broke and adorable so everyone got a poem. i will put them at the end of the newsletter as my poemme section :)

it’s hard to split time with family for the holidays, but it’s so much better than watching your parents fight over the movie Elf. if you’re reading this and your family is dysfunctional— what’s it like being so damn sexy? lmk in the comments!

i bought girl, interrupted at the airport because i was too early to my flight. i’m always late everywhere because if i’m too early i’ll buy shit i dont need ($23 book, $15 hand lotion)

i literally cannot imagine what the “steel” part is of this book my friend is reading. like industrial revolution vibes? i think it’s so interesting that men love to read about history so much. maybe they’re going back to a better time, before women’s suffrage, before CEOs were being sent to the guillotine.

i spent the first couple hours of the flight writing my questions for Gaydar— my new-ish gig. which if you haven’t checked it out— please do! i’m so proud of it : ) i write all the questions and book all the guests. i love my job! please hire me to do more stuff like this!

I write interview questions about gay policy, media and culture and my research is always lots of fun.

i was on this crazy gay trivia website and found some insane questions.

i think the ads added a lot to the experience. also not “this canadian beauty”… the outdated deadnaming of elliot page was crazy. also some of the gay history questions are DEEP CUTS! hmmm what was someone in the 1600s punishment for being gay? having to watch the big bang theory? like no girl, death…

it’s such a fine line writing for a gay trivia show and having it not be sooo deeply depressing. we have to have a little fun, but also remember, we are on the run…

i love to go home to the bay area and remember the roots of my homosexuality, or as my feeld says “homoflexibility”.

i’ve said it a million times, but one of my favorite books of all time is “when we rise” by cleve jones, one of harvey milk’s mentees and the famous gay activist. it’s his memoir which tells the story of his life living through some iconique gay history. he was an activist in the gay liberation movement in SF, helped Harvey Milk get elected, led tons of protests and survived the AIDS epidemic and went on to create the AIDS memorial quilt — which now weighs over 54 tons. It has over 50,000 grave-sized quilts each representing someone who died of AIDS, including Freddie Mercury and Eazy-E. Read more about it here

This book was my first real entry into understanding the queer history in SF and just in general— it’s also an incredible read and i demolished it. I highly recommend!

Also, I’ve been doing some research on my late cousin Jay who died of AIDS in the early 2000s and tried to find his name on the online AIDS quilt database. no dice, but you may be able to find a relative or loved one on the digital quilt. you can search it here

one of the “family movie nights”, my dad recommended we watched one of his favorite movies, Basic Instinct, which I had never heard of, but as soon as my dad said there were lesbians in it i clicked WATCH faster than you can say “dyke!”

there were a lot of sex scenes, more than i perhaps wanted to watch next to my dad, but we both can agree than sharon stone in this movie is insanely hot. it follows a homicide detective who takes sharon stone (hot rich author worth $110 million after inheriting it from her family), who has a hot girlfriend named ROXY (hell yeah) then shenanagins ensue as they say….

my dad and i, like classic californians, spent a majority of the movie analyzing how insane it was that the detective kept driving from stinson beach to san francisco so casually. my dad said “you know it looks more like they’re in carmel than stinson” we looked it up and he was right. it was carmel.

it was sharon stone’s breakout role according to my dad, which shocked and impressed me because she is so self-assured and bad ass. in the scene where the detective comes to her house to question her about the murder of her boyfriend this is the interaction:

not to mention she looks like this:

sharon stone delivers an incredible performance. her character takes no shit from anyone, while she is being questioned in the police station she opens her legs to show her actual pussy (no underwear) in what i am told is an *iconic* scene by my father, of course sitting right next to me. she is such a stone cold bad ass and she walks around acting, dressing, and owning the $110 million dollars she is worth. i have taken my fair share of shit from other people and after watching basic instinct on a drizzly december evening in california i decided i too, was going to act like i was worth $110 million dollars. what’s the worst that could happen? i actually become worth $110 million dollars?

my aisle mate has now informed me that his older half sister is a lesbian who is so charismatic she’s never paid rent— she just meets a high paying girlfriend who takes her in #goals. but like my dad’s friend claudia says— i need to get my “fuck you money”, take care of myself, make sure my own shit is sorted, then i can find a wife, and as my aisle mate tells me, “always get the pre-nup”.

christmas poems :)

I also will be writing one poem/prompt for each day in 2025 on my Poetry is Gay Substack for my subscribers! check it out here: poetryisgay.substack.com

sneak peak here:

prompt: write about your NYE 

and just like that 
the rain washed away 
what was left of 2024 
we are laughing in the subaru 
lightning almost strikes me dead in my tutu 
i'm too early to the party 
my bangs dead, drenched on my face 
i open the medicine cabinet 
i brush my hair
i fix my lip 
i irish exit 
the white boys are moshing 
at coyote club 
there’s a woman passing around 
kazoos and glitter bowler hats 
i find my muse by the pinball machine 
we count down on the outskirts
as if tomorrow is an after thought 
all we have is now 
now 
now 
we’re kissing
you tell me 
you love how i take up space 
as i lead you through the crowd, 
tutu as a forcefield 

hope everyone is off to an incredible 2025! i love you all <3333

xxooxx,

brooke

i’m stacking from the train, where it smells like diaper and i’m listening to 2am (breathe) convinced it’s a song about abortion.

i am going to see my second favorite band (fleet foxes, first is paramore) and i smoked walking to the train and almost bought flowers for the lead singer then remembered we aren’t tight like that. i was in my room feeling so heavy, like a bag of sand, (do you ever feel like a plastic bag… of sand), and i heated up my leftover chicken over rice i got from the bodega last night. it’s sad, to reheat bodega food. i don’t think that legally counts as “dinner” but neither does a $8 cafe sandwich on a baguette so hard you have to yank it with your teeth like jerky.

my favorite meal i had in LA was el pollo loco. look if you don’t know, you just don’t fucking know okay. el pollo loco has been a fixture in my life for as long as i remember. el pollo loco and chick fil a existed similar spaces in my mind— the best fast food we could only get on special occasion. we lived near a mcdonald’s and a taco bell, that wasn’t exotic, that wasn’t erotic. chick fil a we had to wait for thanksgiving or christmas when we went to marietta, georgia to see our grandparents. one year we went, i forgot to bring shirts so i went to the old navy and my grandma bought me some. they call benihana “fujihana” in georgia, i’d report back to the fourth grade, only now realizing they could not even be related, just two hibachi restaurants ending in “hana”

wait that’s lowkey poetic as fuck. ??? “god has favored me”, no wonder the fried rice is so good. if a word in english meant “god favored me” it would be butter. i didn’t see a lot of butter growing up, mostly olive oil and gluten free flour. only butter when we made banana muffins. my mom rarely baked but when she did it was banana bread. i had a tweet go viral in HS (45 likes) and it said: “when you at school craving banana bread then come home from school to a fresh loaf” and it was a picture of my friend Jeremy looking creepy and mischievous.

youth is wasted on the young i guess. i’m even young now and im like I WISH I WERE YOUNGER! as if i won’t be nostalgic for today by next week.

i’m going to bowery ballroom for the show and i keep forgetting which stop it’s off. like girl, bowery.

i grew up next to an el pollo loco and when we moved from the deep suburbs to the slightly more relevant suburbs we moved away from the el pollo loco. but on the drive to tahoe we could get it, or if we drove the 30 min back to our old neighborhood. i remember after my boob job (first one) my mom drove me to the el pollo loco 30 min away so i could get a pollo bowl and a side of mac n cheese. one of our better moments.

not to be soooo american but fast food is good as fuck. like the ones with chicken specifically- i think the burgers are all poisonous and the chicken nuggets are fried pink goo but

cane’s, chick fil a, el pollo loco, popeyes, KFC…. those are some incredible institutions!

the day i got dropped from every sorority in college (because i had adult braces) i ordered KFC to my dorm and got an entire life sized chocolate cake (not miniature just a regular sized cake) and i cried in my bed after going over to my mom’s friend’s daughters dorm (who I’d met once) and cried in her shorts and t shirt. i didn’t even get to wear my dress. i just peeled it off and threw it on the floor and picked it up a few years later for coachella.

fried chicken was there for me the day i realized my “community” wouldn’t care about me if i wasn’t pretty (in the way where you dont have braces and a unique style). i remember my sister coaching me on what to say about the elephant in the room: “yeah im actually getting them off before halloween!” the alpha phis couldn’t help but look behind me, for a girl with teeth like pearly white gates. i’d sign into the orthodontist’s office on my knees (ugly betty coded) and beg them to get taken off. adult braces were sent to me to teach me how shallow and mean people are.

i miss the days before postmates when all we had was the phone number to the mountain mikes, a $20 bill and the Benchwarmers DVD. i miss waking up to the credits talking in circles and being enveloped completely by the brown leather couch, hungover on Orange Fanta and Dance Dance Revolution.

when i was in la i was singing so much more. i used to say you can tell when im happy because im singing more. when i am quiet its very much a canary in a coal mine for my mental illness. growing up i never expressed my emotions i would just go nonverbal and look forlorn, waiting for someone to ask if i was okay, then insist on them prying me open like a pistachio.

it felt good to sing in the crowd with fleet foxes. i miss being in choir. our director used to always pull up cheesy articles on how choral music makes your heartbeat synch up with the other members of the choir and i used to roll my eyes but i can’t believe i was 14 and experiencing something that profound. that’s like saying i love you in missionary times a million. synchronized heartbeats with 125 teenagers? all from different lives, different backgrounds, different struggles and fears? hearts beating as one? that’s the true meaning of christmas, bitch.

this is how it felt tonight, when everyone started singing the counter melody in Mykonos. we all sounded like little sugar cookie angels. everyone was singing so sweetly and saintly and we sounded like a children’s chorus grown up. you know how little kids can sing in unison and no matter what it sounds sweet and good? because it’s so pure? that’s what it sounded like.

i made a list of all the people i’ve had sex with and their genders.

statistically, i’m bisexual. culturally, i’m lesbian. logistically, i’m over it.

i was very inspired by the movie what’s your number as a kid and always dreamed of the day when i’d live in new york and have sex with 20 people.

i’m not there (YET!) but i downlaoded Feeld to see if we can get there!!! i want to be an unmarried HAG!

i downloaded Feeld and immediately have so many people liking me but i have no idea how to reply to them. i wrote in my bio that i dont wanna fuck your boyfriend unless he’s really hot, which i fear may give a bunch of audacious bisexuals an opportunity to fend for their crusty boyfriends. but hinge is a pretty passive and sexless app and i think im ready to get out there.

feeld has you list your kinks.

brat, dom, rope bunny, toys, flirting, massage, cuddling, intimacy, rough.

i got shy. all of mine are something like monogamy, intimacy, communication, connection.

i like that we can rebrand healthy relationships as a kink. yes im kinky, i want secure attachment. to make sweet love, heartbeats synched as one, all singing fleet foxes in harmony and saying i love you in missionary.

what am i looking for? well i know what it is but it seems unreasonable. a committed girlfriend who has a beautiful rack and a more beautiful mind (i know — if that’s even possible!)

i’ve been getting really gender essentialist about boob guy and ass guys. guys is obviously gender neutral. and men have been saying that for years until i started calling them “girl”, which i’ve been told is NOT gender neutral. it’s midnight and i want a juice from mr kiwi. much to my chagrin they are open.

hours later and im belly full of juice. i learned mr. kiwi is only closed for one hour out of 23, from midnight to one. the juice guy just takes a break and comes back.

i bought a guy on the street asking for money and grape soda. he could’ve asked for anything and he got grape soda.

i am figuring out feeld and i think it’s cool. i matched with a hot lesbian who’s interests are simply “scissoring” umm. i think im gonna like it here! if scissoring has 0 fans im dead.

my take on the boob girl/ass girl thing is you want what you dont have. if you have tits, you want ass, if you have ass (me), you want tits.

st. vincent made a guitar for people with boobs and so i had the idea to make a microphone for people with boobs. it’s a microphone with my phone number on it.

someone i hook up with sometimes always texts me after having negronis so i joke that every negroni must come with my phone number.

i got home from the show and tied a ribbon around my cat’s neck and took flash photography of him. he hated it obviously. but come on look

he’s so cute. i’m finishing my juice at 1 am wondering if my cat is mad at me.

i said to my friend ryan in LA “you hate me” and he said, “no but thats your dream isn’t it. for everyone to hate you?”

and it’s like honestly? yes. if i knew everyone hated me i could just relax. i was right! now i can start over!

now im back on the J, taking the train to my DBT group therapy. i feel bad because i forgot my packet and i didn’t get new stickers. the first week one of the girls said “i don’t know how i can commit to myself by coming to this group every week. i want to but i don’t know if i will” and i said “maybe this is silly but … i have stickers?” and everyone’s face LIT UP. now a few girls bring stickers and at the end of the session we pass them around.

growing up is all about staying young. i still remember the metallic textured little mermaid stickers my piano teacher would give me after my lessons. i had an entire door full of stickers in my room growing up we eventually replaced. i still think about it her.

poemme time?

november 7 2024 
church of god
presidente beer 
building for sale 
99 cent friendly 
trabajo, passion, honestidad 
daily press
harriet ross tubman avenue 
african pride 
accident lawyers
brookdale family care center 
color match 
what kind of wizard are you? 
CTE high school 
santa biblia 
blissful pretzel bun 
going out of business
everything must go 
thank you for your business 
drivers wanted 

what the living do 
we miss our mom’s calls, 
we forget the pills dad took after 
he lost his 
we tell dad we can’t come home for the full week 
just four days so we don’t go crazy 
we forget his dad playing puzzles all day 
in the asylum, he calls it 
he has his favorite nurses
but no nieces 
the grandkids stopped coming home for christmas 
and we started decorating our own christmas trees 
we rescue a cat since mom was allergic, 
or so she says she was 
the same way dad always had migraines on sunday mornings 
i tell her i’m allergic to texas on thanksgiving week 
i tell my dad i have a migraine on christmas 
i take my pills 
they gave me after 
my family split 
i ran out this morning 
am i running on empty or am i finally clean? 
is it bad, does it mean something, if i can’t fight this thing? 
sometimes the sun never comes up and i swear it’s so dark 
it’s like looking at your feed under murky water 
and you know they must be there but you’re swimming and you 
can’t see them and you wonder if you’ll stop here
in the deep end 
your final lap 
and then it strikes you 
yellow blossoms popping through the snow 
daffodils in central park
christmas is over and the miracles 
have just begun 
i shake my pills like maracas 
and remember i know how to salsa 
i think of the heat and the sweat of unknown bodies
moving my hips in mexico city 
i think about the taste, that first time, 
of sweet tender lips 
that indistinguishable flavor 
i’ve tried to remember for years 
there are things i can hold onto 
these are the things that keep me living 

movie star hair 
we wanted body 
i flipped my head upside down 
and he hit me with the hot shot 
the black conair hairdryer
like the ones that come with the motel 6 rooms 
i look at my mom’s makeup brushes and ask her
every single morning if i can do her hair before work 
she is the boss
she wouldn’t let an intern do her face 
i watch her put the coffee color into her crease
i still remember the smell of the Viva La Glam lipstick 
my mother was a MAC girl 
she bought me the orange shadow from the nordstrom counter
when we needed it for cheer competitions 
i used to say blue and orange followed me around 
one day i got the courage to dye my hair and i felt just like 
hayley williams
i too, wanted to be the girl with red hair 
even when her hair wasn’t red anymore 
ryan dyed his green in college and we never forget it 
even though he looks like forrest gump now 
we walk the reservoir and when we laugh 
its like looking into a mirror 
we look at the moon and i can’t believe 
it’s the same one from summer camp 
it’s the same one from florida when i sat alone with it 
crying next to the pool 
someone passed out in one summer 
they were doing a breath holding competition 
now they have signs for it 
do not do breath holding competitions 
i watched a grown man shit the pool 
i chased after sand crabs 
we drank smirnoff watermelon and cried 
about death and life and love and the lack of it 
we chased our shadows and ran into each other 
full force, freaky friday style 
hoping to switch lives 
we drove back to atlanta in the GMC 
and went back to living across the country 
i couldn’t believe we were looking at the same moon 
i took spanish she took french 
i wanted to move to italy, i told my parents
when we went to europe that one summer 
and i was gone from my boyfriend for 3 weeks 
and he cried every night and i had 
so much fun drinking orange wine with my sister in the rain 
i stayed home from the club one night to FaceTime 
and i wonder what i would’ve seen, if i had let myself go 

desperate housewives poem 
lynette is pregnant with twins, again 
tom scavo had to sell his red mustang to the neighbors 
i sit and watch desperate housewives like my life depends on it 
and maybe it does 
i ask the juice lady if she watches betty la fea
i am so focused on conjugating verbs 
i forget to bring my juice 
she runs out to hand it to me in the street as we are saying goodbye and i am so glad i paid attention in class
i let your tears fall on me like an early winter drizzle
they fall right off my face like a rain slick 
i feel like coraline in my yellow coat and blue hair 
and i miss the maple smell of my cat and his warm chest 
as he sits below me on the couch, watching yes
another episode 
we sit down and clock in for a 5 and a half hour shift
at the desperate housewives factory 
gabrielle’s hair is long again, 
they got money back after carlos got his sight back 
i am so addicted to these women and how easy it is 
for me to step into their lives and out of my own 
i consider jacking off while i collage
because my art is pornographic and i look at 
tits all day in my room and i daydream about what they would be like if they were here, in my room, attached to a body attached to a head of a woman 
who doesn’t live on wisteria lane, on a set, in a hospital, 
on the paramount lot 
i pick up the ribbon for Oliver and start a beautiful new configuration that has taken me weeks to discover 
he goes ballistic and i am a genius 
he won’t shut up and that is when i realize
its already time for us to eat dinner 
i am sick of my chili and i am sure 
he is sick of kibble 
we both devour it the same 
my grandma sent us a cat tree 
i never understood how a gift for someone else 
could be a gift for yourself 
he runs up and down and i think that he could go to the olympics 
and if he killed a woman in a hit and run 
i would cover for him 
the women of wisteria lane are teaching me 
how to be a mother 
because no one else ever taught me how 
i grew up this year and my roots are firmly planted
in the couch we inherited 
from the roommate before me 
maggie tells me to reset my bed karma 
after a bad night sleep by washing the sheets
so i get rid of my mattress and i get rid of the frame 
i buy new sheets 
i sold the bones of the bed to a woman 
on facebook marketplace
i don’t want the same indent of my body anymore 
i want to create a new carving of myself 
waking up next to a baby that will never grow up 
holding onto someone that loves me
no matter what 

LOVE YOU FOREVER!!!

xoxooxox,

brooke

first some brief announcements! i’m in LA, i’m a CAT MOM, and i’m doing the first ever POETRY IS GAY in LA!

tickets for something blue HERE

RSVP for PIG HERE!! become a paid subscriber for a ticket hereeeee

Well I am on the famous journey from JFK to LAX and truly thank God because the only place I can really think is in The Sky. My therapist Mike (gay, partnered) and I have been doing a grounding exercise where I go to the clouds, similar to the ones in the Teenage Dream album cover. It is so important to have a gay therapist who can understand these kinds of references. My mom calls me the “Katy Perry of comedy”, because I wear bright colors and have blue hair and my family is southern evangelical Christian. Katy Perry is a PK (pastor’s kid), which is a specific type of trauma. thank god i grew up religious, i’m gonna make such a porny smelling perfume some day!

Yesterday morning I was bringing my new cat Oliver (cat mom reveal), in my little bubble backpack to the train and a man at the turnstile asked if I was Katy Perry. I said “no, but he is!” and pointed to my bubble. Katy Perry’s cat is famously named Kitty Purry, and they launched a fragrance shaped like a sexy black cat. I saw it at the Nordstrom once. (Grandmas love to say “the” Nordstrom).

I think being famous would be really weird and hard because you don’t have humbling experiences. For example, yesterday I was on the 3 train coming home from the vet with an hour and a transfer to go and my cat’s bubble was sitting on my lap and I go hmm Oliver feels very warm….and wet, OHH and now there is cat piss everywhere. so I put him on the floor and then cat piss leaked down the 3 train, under people’s shoes and people were passive aggressively lifting their shoes to avoid the stream and I have to sit there with blue hair a big tutu dress with turquoise Mary Janes and a matching cat bubble just being like sorryyyy my whimsy got the best of me! smelling deeply of cat urine.

Celebrities also don’t bike to the Smile Lounge (dentist) in Greenpoint the day after Halloween night and get 3 surprise cavities filled while British Bake Off plays on the TV and your body accidentally goes totally numb with the gum numbing shots and you feel like you’re getting taken advantage of sexually while getting fillings on an empty stomach so you start crying and the gay dentist tech keeps trying to queen out with you but you desperately need to leave the office so you can sob on an apartment park bench before getting a $40 pedicure with your sunglasses on feeling like your body is a sack of sand, since you can’t bike home. then your dad tells you to go to the beach for two weeks to “fix this” then later is like “I wasn’t being very good at helping” and you’re like “yeah…”.

see like, that wouldn’t happen if I was Julianne Hough, who by the way… really did something for me developmentally in Footloose. I used to think I really loved watching dance movies and I now think I was into that sexually. bring it on, burlesque, footloose.. Dancer girls slide into my DMs!

So anyway. I think this is why celebrities are out of touch. We need these experiences to bind us as a community, as a world. The day I have an in home dentist and someone to uber my cat to the vet for me is the day I stop being interesting and am not allowed to write comedy anymore. Isn’t it interesting how almost the moment an artist becomes “successful” they stop having a unique and interesting perspective? I think getting rich off art kind of ruins the art. But maybe I will be different and better than that. Or I will become evil!! Ooooh this is exciting! What’s gonna happen!

I went to Webster Hall last night to watch my sorority little open up for the “I just wanna be part of your SYMPHONYYYY!!!” girl and bought an $8 yellow Gatorade with the lid removed and confiscated. I am so proud of her and I also think it is so funny to watch your pop star friend and then hang out with her and see how different she is on stage than in real life. And watching her line up with fans taking pictures with her was so strange. Like damn bitch we used to watch lesbian porn in the parking lot of McDonald’s trying to figure out if we were gay or not. Life is such a journey!

I have been thinking a lot about fame and Being Online and stuff. I feel like people think they know me because of all the Posting but I think that’s why people with a platform feel so alone, because everyone thinks they know them so they don’t make an effort to actually get to know them. Sometimes when I see people I haven’t seen in a while they will just start telling me things about myself instead of asking me about it. It feels weird. I am trying to think of a new way to talk to people that isn’t “what’s new!” but not as cheesy as “what’s been setting your soul on fire lately rock star?” I do gratitude lists every morning and it actually does help. You can email me yours if you want!

Today mine is:

1.     Pretty house with lots of natural wood in this movie I’m watching

2.     Caramel M&M’s

3.     Oliver Pillows (my cat)

4.     Maggie and Basil

5.     Dansko clogs

I have been having such a hard time finding the courage to write a newsletter. What is that? It used to be so fun. I’m afraid of success. Failing feels bad too! I don’t want anything to change! But I need money. But not too much! Unless…

I was sobbing today leaving for the airport when Oliver and I had to part. I think he got mad at me for taking him to the vet in the UWS then also making him watch me from his bubble backpack have a $20 sushi lunch. To be fair it was really good but Maggie said I “deserved it” for “making him dine in” at a sushi restaurant after a long day at the vet after getting a vaccine #MyCatGetsTheVax. Whatever. New mom stuff. I keep having to body shower when my cat pees on me or I spill my coffee on myself. I’m so mom-coded these days. Huge, heaving breasts, mood swings like you wouldn’t believe, pickles and ice cream for breakfast. I feel very strongly that if anything was going to impact my perfect son I would do anything to stop it. I’m mama bear now.

I really feel like i am becoming a mom in the way that i had a kid because i was lonely and now he has free will and i’m like… ok so you dont wanna hang out with me? fucking bitch.

I took him to the vet (out of love), I washed him of his own piss (warm wash cloth, drop of Dawn), I fed him (science diet wet), played with him, and yet… I felt him pull away from me. So I pushed him to come to me. I begged, I pleaded, I brought out his favorite black shoelace (he’s a working class cat). He resisted. So I loved him harder, with more force. Treats, picking him up, trying to rock him like a child. He begged to be put down, put his newly clipped claws into the very breasts I feed him from and found the floor.

Then for the first time in my life I found myself in a puddle of my own tears on the floor over a cat that wouldn’t love me back, in the very moment I wanted it. Like okay… you are my ex?!?! I am turning into my mother, who is turning into her mother, who is her mother… but thank god I have the practice round of acting out with my cat instead of my child.

They say your triggers are your teachers. Oliver is the sensei and I am his grasshopper. I feel like birth order science is really playing out with my cat and dog right now. With the risk of revealing too much, I am a second child/middle child combo and Oliver is also technically the second kid. We have been living with Maggie’s dog Jelly Pillows (where Oliver gets his last name) for the last couple years and I just recently have been let into the “circle of Mommy’s”, which currently includes Maggie and their ex/co-dog parent Basil. Insert joke about being queer in brooklyn.

I have been putting in the work to be friends with Jelly and now she eats breakfast with me. I let her lick eggs off the plate but she’s TERRIFIED of silverware. And I get it girl! How is that shit made?! She is one of those traumatized chihuahuas that hates everyone especially men (preach mama!), and it’s hard because basically the only men that come over are gay but chihuahuas don’t know the difference between an e-boy and an otter so to her they are all enemies. Jelly’s like, girl if you don’t think gay men are some of the most misogynistic people you’re part of the problem honey! Honestly we need to learn from her and her boundaries and her inability to be quiet even when the world (and myself) wants her to shut up. Yasss nasty woman!!! She wears a pink pussy hat and a #I’mWithHer dog onesie every day. She has been kicked off of Twitter for making jokes about assassinating world leaders. We stan!

This is all to say, Jelly is a diva and a boundary queen and Oliver has just come into the house totally unsuspecting and sweet and Jelly is not happy. She has begun to adjust to sharing her sun spot in Maggie’s window with a new feline friend (who isn’t into smelling asshole like she is.. no problem), but it’s jolted her for sure. I find myself soothing Oliver: honey it’s not your fault, you didn’t do anything wrong. You just are here and that is triggering to Jelly because she’s used to having all the attention. It’s not your fault but the fact that you’re here means Jelly gets less attention. You are being really brave in a new space and I want you to have freedom to explore!

It feels like I am re-parenting myself via my cat. People talk about inner children but they don’t talk as much about inner parents. Bitch, you have a whole nuclear family inside yourself! Hello! Mom, dad, sister, brother, hamster, the whole 9 yards! My friend from college used to talk about re-parenting herself because her mom died when she was young. I didn’t get that until now. I didn’t think it was applicable for me, someone with two alive parents. But we should all be doing it.

I did a writing exercise at Poetry is Gay the other week that I stole from The Artist’s Way #ArtIsStealing and the prompt is “write about your childhood as if it were perfect”, and I discovered some things about myself. I wished I had quality time with my mom, I wish I could’ve been out as gay, I wish I could’ve shared more of my honest self with my family, I wish my sister and my relationship was different, more gentle, more collaborative, I wish I dated my friend I was in love with, I wish everyone approved, I wish, I wish, I wish... So I started finding little ways to parent myself in this direction. If I could do it all over again and I was in charge, how would I do it? Allowing myself to have green carpet and pink walls, taking myself camping and learning how to build a fire, staying up all night giggling writing in my journal about kissing girls.

I am scared to go to LA. It is hard to step back into my old life feeling like a changed person. People always ask if I miss California and I say “everyone who has ever hurt me lives there, but I do”. I also say “I will probably die in California. But first I need to live in New York!!” *maniacal laughter* . This is some of my classic California material.

But California ultimately is my home. As my friend puts it, I’m a sun baby. I need it to live. I’m like the mom in Tangled but for the sun. I know these streets and the flora and fauna and when I walk the reservoir I see 7-10 people I know and honey that’s famiglia.

I am soooo scared to do my show but I guess that is good? There’s a saying about it like Do It Afraid or something that I think is on a Lululemon tote. I am just a little girl who is scared and a set of parents who don’t know what they’re doing and a little cat who isn’t totally sure where to pee so goes into the shower drain and we are all zipped up into a wedding dress that isn’t ours putting on eyeshadow to stop us from crying because the only thing worse than being sad is ruining beautiful art.

constants
there are some things 
i know to be true 
the F train is always 
6 minutes away 
the hottest it gets is
the blue part of the flame 
angel by shaggy 
is medicine 


i drank a THC seltzer and all I got was this psychotic break
i had a thc seltzer at my halloween party 
and all I got was this psychotic break 
i went to the smile lounge
the next day: 
three cavities,
three spontaneous fillings
candy in the waiting room like 
a bully 
i wanted to ask the doctor
how long she had been a dentist
but her hands were in my mouth 
i watched british bake off on the TV
tears streaming down my face 
3pm and almost nothing to eat 
my body turned numb 
these crafty brits
made something called a chelsea bun 
it looked like a cinnamon roll with pistachios 
one of the guys kept decorating his food
with bright red sport team logos 
tacky but also very british 
i thought of all the brits i’ve dated
cheering on the game,
pint in one hand 
android in the other 
the worst place they colonized? 
my heart 
i applaud the WNBA 
and other lesbian sport leagues 
but i do wish they had not chosen to infiltrate 
our gay communities with 
sports related camaraderie 
if I had it my way
lesbian bars would play 
desperate housewives
on silent with subtitles
and we could listen to
Troye sivan and fleet foxes 
oscillate between bumping and grinding 
sobbing and crying 
kissing in the photo booth
stepping outside for a phantom cigarette
instead smelling the fall, 
the girls in their glossier you 
and santal 33 


dry humping no hand stuff 
in the uber listening to 
bad day by daniel powder
the american idol kick off song 
painted head to toe blue
innocence left in the back seat
trying to manifest a girlfriend 
so i dm this gay guy on mondays
manifest monday 
i dm to claim 
i claim katie
28, 5’8”, doesn’t drink 
smokes weed for fun
speaks spanish, italian, kindly,
we are like warm butter on toast 
my uber driver asks how i am 
i say “a little blue”
he says that’s okay 
he doesn’t see my face
it smells like a Spanish night club 
or the duty free cologne section of JFK
the abandoned Kylie Lipkit vending machine 
we exist in liminal spaces, 
girl parties on Tuesdays 
men in beards roll their eyes 
I guess it’s lesbian night
they do not leave
they order an IPA in between
carabiners and dyke drama 
wondering what the hell is taking so long 
i skip past the parts in porn i dont like 
it's waiting for me when i open chrome 
in the vet's office
Dr. Monopoli will be with you shortly, 
she’s currently in surgery 
my friend is a surgeon and I 
am accidentally watching porn 
in her office 
another unqualified mother 
26, gay, alone
take me to church 
i’ll worship like a cat 
licking the toothpaste off your fingers
letting you cut my nails 
it might surprise us 
that i don’t mind the 
rectal exam 
will you washcloth me
if i leak on the 3?
if a laugh is a smile that bursts
then piss is ecstasy  

the bus stop where we met 
i hear the sound of silence
here for the first time
it mostly glows 
green pokémon orbs 
apartment goers dance in light filled windows 
blue and purple
pulsing
a taxi— parked, in for the night 
inside sleeping with their
little taxi children 
the whirr of mopeds delivering 
late night crunch wrap supremes 
to lovers intertwined 
like chow mein noodles
high on love, drunk on each other 
craving something cheap and quick 
while they live life long and slow 
in the first moments of tomorrow
mylar birthday letters tangle onto
the walking man 
i play the rainbow game  
i am here,
for the first time in this moment
with the train going to church ave 
below my feet
the night, thin and dark
running through my hands

thank you all as always for reading, and i hope to see some of you cali angels this week! i’m in town until the 17 so let’s hang out :) i’m also available to do your show/poetry reading/kid’s birthday party.

love you!!!!

yours always,

brooke

reporting live from Generic Bushwick Cafe drinking a Green Smoothie and listening to Clairo in honor of bisexual awareness week.

before we dive in, i wanted to cordially invite you all to my new solo show Something Blue, at The Tank in Midtown next Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday! i am sooo excited and so nervous and would love some support as i workshop this new show all about weddings <333 if cost is a barrier PLZ dm me on instagram and i can help you get a cheaper ticket :) @ilikerainbow

TICKETS HERE!

i have been watching desperate housewives (after a long, loving and devoted relationship to ugly betty), and it has been very enlightening. the women on wisteria lane are constantly wrapped up in controversy, secrets, affairs, murder, and soapy story lines. they are caught between judging their neighbors and praying on their downfall while simultaneously keep their own ships afloat. although it may all seem completely dramatic and fictional, it’s not that far off from reality. the only real difference is we see the inner workings of their lives.

growing up in a rich suburb there was always controversy bubbling under the surface, sometimes it would pop, sometimes it would make the news, other times it was a murmur, whispers the whole town shared.

as a child i had two big secrets, one I knew and the other i didn’t.

the first one my parents sat me down and told me when i was about 8 years old— that i had a birth defect called poland syndrome, and one of my boobs would never develop. i remember my mom and sister telling me, pun intended, to keep it close to the chest. they didn’t want kids at school bullying me.

so when making out with another member of the legally blonde musical ensemble my freshman year of high school, i only let him feel up one of my boobs, saving the other for marriage. i wore three bras to cheer practice. i stuffed my athletic bikini for PE swim with a squishy chicken cutlet. I let the ladies at the nordstrom intimate department where I bought it think i was a young survivor of breast cancer, not a deformed child. it felt better to be brave than to be broken.

when i told my first boyfriend about my little secret, he’d informed me he’d already heard from the suburban rumor mill, that i had one boob— in the middle of my chest— like a titclops. not only was my secret out despite all my efforts, but it had been contorted into something far more strange than reality. i didn’t have discretion, but worse, i didn’t have control over the narrative. i was devastated, sharing a bowl of tomato soup and grilled cheese at the nordstrom cafe. but after a pang of hurt, who did this? i felt a wave of relief, and later that week i let someone other than my pediatrician and mother see my naked chest for the first time. it felt amazing. i was free. i learned the bliss of premarital sex and letting someone else see the naked parts of you you didn’t share with the world. i became addicted to that feeling. i started to unravel.

my other secret of course, was that i was gay. but i was so busy hiding my boobs, i didn’t even realize it. i thought my obsession with boobs was strictly scientific, pure jealousy. always gazing at the victoria’s secret models— those bitches. those lucky bitches. maybe that’s why i’m a boob guy— because i always wanted to have normal naturals. i didn’t need big, i just wanted simple symmetry. as my yoga instructor today said, the body is asymmetrical. amen, sister. then he said to feel the organs soften. i tried to imagine it. he talked about our livers and kidneys, i always imagine my kidneys as big beans. my liver is tight and young. i will probably live forever. smile your collarbones.

yoga is the best place to look at people’s bad tattoos and wonder what it would be like to have a different body. it is also where i feel the most perverted, turned on by my hands on adjustments and ogling everyone’s bodies. i hate seeing male comedians in yoga class, it’s like seeing a teacher at the grocery store, but you’re in a sports bra and keep accidentally moaning. it is my quiet time to focus on my breathing and if i will have sex with anyone in this class. men afterward flirt with me and ask me how my practice was, while i watch a beautiful lesbian get on her bike and ride off into the fog.

i wonder what i would feel like if i knew i was gay sooner than 19, if this felt normal to me. i had no problem looking at and talking to men, i practically was groomed to be a professional straight person my entire life. but every time i go to a lesbian bar i feel like i’m at a bar mitzvah, sober and bobbing my head to the black eyed peas, wanting someone to want me during the slow dance to don’t stop believin’.

i wish i could go back in time and talk to my fifth grade teacher, who was rumored to be a lesbian. i wish she had been allowed to tell me what was normal and what wasn’t. i think if i just heard her say, my wife, one time, it could’ve healed me. i could still use that advice. Ms. Hungerford, are you gay? or do you just love surfing and pomeranians? i thought keeping secrets would give me power, and all they gave me was shame. i listened to the kids make fun of the gay teachers, ms. fungleturd, mr. thong. what would they call me?

it’s weird living in my gay brooklyn bubble, where everyone is not outwardly entangled in toxic dialogue about their bodies, with their sexuality, their gender. i remember being a freshman in college and making out with a girl saturday night in a pink corduroy dress and waking up in the morning to go to church in black skinny jeans and a cream sweater. my therapist tells me a dialectic is when both things can be true, but i don’t think this was what was happening here. i was at odds with myself, split in the middle, divided by fear. i dont even like cream!

i wonder if the women of wisteria lane were somewhere else, if they were gay, if they went to sarah lawrence for college, if things would’ve turned out differently for them. i know it’s not just gay and deformed people who keep secrets, who run away from who they are. but maybe we are the ones who have the excuse to come out and say — I’m different! deal with it! i’m tig notaro and i’m gay and i have cancer!

i think the closest straight people have to this is if they run away to join the circus.

mom, dad, i’m joining the circus! I found the family photos, i know i have an uncle who was in the circus too! why didn’t you tell me about him?! you hid this from me. this is who i was born to be, i’m an acrobat! i’m following in uncle ted’s legacy— if you need to reach me you can call Barnum & Bailey, i’m never coming back!

but honey, what will the neighbors think? what will i tell them, you’ve abandoned your polos and khakis for a leotard and waterproof eyeliner?

I do think it’s a privilege to be something different— it gives you the permission to live your life how you see fit, instead of fitting into this mold. if i wasn’t gay i’d probably be married and pregnant! and not that there’s anything wrong with that, other than that isn’t who i am, and it’s not what i want, at least not right now. i feel lucky for the opportunity to explore and try new things, to have a re-do on adolescence to get a second life.

in high school i never kissed a girl, i never dyed my hair, i never snuck out and i never did drugs (besides weed but honey that’s medicine). now i get to do whatever i want! and i dont have to tell anyone about it at youth group!

i wish i could release the women of wisteria lane of their picnic baskets of baked goods and post-nuptial agreements, but i can release myself from the expectation of perfection, and allow myself to make mistakes and try new things.

so i’m gonna go do my little typewriter poems in the park, throw my little shows, and do my little crafts. and yeah i’ll probably suck on some normal naturals too.

poemmes

jacking off to the meditation lady 
i’m trying to be less charming 
and more vulnerable

proof 
there is proof we existed 
in the pinterest boards,
your location still shared
all those years later 
i see your hair on the city streets
gone with the wind
street names that are a letter off
from who we once were
names i wanted to take 
names i wanted to make immortal 
now lie impermanently like puddles 
but what i know is that it will rain 
it always does,
even in los angeles, 
even in the summer when the sky 
is too sticky it cries 
and you will be there
as sure as the sun will rise 

desperate housewives 
i ask you 
for the truth 
you hold it hurting
like a trophy
i lie awake all night 
thinking about 
tomorrow 
i don’t want you to be 
someone else’s
fuck marry kill 
we did it all in this life
we’re young and hot 
someone’s gotta love us 
but would they hurry up? 
i cooked us dinner
our tummy’s hurt
we sit in silence
no room for dessert
you clean your plate
thinking about 
someone else’s potatoes
now you’re playing chess
on your phone
and i’m telling you 
what to tell me 
so i feel it 

some other exciting events coming up…

tickets

that’s all!!!!

THANK YOU I LOVE YOU!!!

SEE YOU AT THE TANK FOR MY SOLO SHOW PLZZZ COMEEE ILYYY!!!

these ears were $80 ( did not buy )

i am back in the city and of course i have contracted what city officials are calling covid-19.

order a poem for yourself or a loved one to be shipped in an adorable envelope with stickers and a customized poem by yours truly ♡

in typical brooke fashion i have run myself absolutely ragged and come down with an illness, and i’ve been alone in my room for so long i wrote a song. i do think boredom breeds creativity but my creativity is allergic to boredom! so sometimes you have to get sick to be bored and then you can write a song which has been a goal of mine for about two years. CHECK!

i got home from my travels to about 6 boxes of shit my mom had sent to my apartment from my little sister’s apartment thinking i may want the 99% burnt candles or the pillowcases that smell like weed and BO but i was able to salvage this little salt lamp which is sort of my glowing good luck charm.

i hate being sick and i hate asking for help but sometimes you just need your roommate to bring a tray of snacks and hydrating fluids upstairs for you to peep your head out of your room and grab like a little prisoner.

i peeled off my acrylic nails as soon as i got back from my trip and it strangely prevented me from biting my cuticles for about a month and that paired with swimming in the aegean sea has given me a perfect set of paws for the rest of summer. well how’s that for homophobia breaking a habit!

i got back from my two big weddings back to back weekends, my sister in lake tahoe and my friend in rome, italy (heard of it?!), and the friend i was traveling with landed and immediately got engaged. and yes, they are getting married on my birthday this year! this wedding fun never stops does it… and yes of course i’m going bridesmaid mode round #2 #bridetribe we are so back!

speaking of… i’ll be running some new material next wednesday in brooklyn with my dear friend ellory won’t you come along? tickets here will be talking a lot about my family and the weddings of my little life…. as well as my deformed body per usual. ft. a live poem!

did you guys experience that full moon? apparently it was a big one.. a blue one.. something magical. everyone on tiktok was screaming at me to MANIFEST! MANIFEST! so i started a pinterest board with a lot of images like this:

whaaat? i am so sick of professional success, you know it’s lonely at the top, i’d like someone to share my riches* with!

*queen sized bed i bought off another brooklyn comedian for $200

for real though, i have been a very patient and obedient little soldier. toiling away, doing my in person therapy (honey that telehealth aint cuttin it), focusing on myself, getting a financial adviser, not hooking up with angry alcoholics with intimidating lesbian keepers, doing my morning pages, i think i deserve a beautiful kind girlfriend as a treat!

i do love my life but honey i don’t love my love life. it’s boring! i want to spice up my life with a little pumpkin spice romance this autumn… could it be you? more on this after the break.

back to the grind, ta ta for now!

poemme time

the louder the airpods the closer to god
popeyes between my thighs 
a warm honey biscuit 
always tastes like home 
even if you don’t know
where that is anymore 
i’m nostalgic for the past 
for places that aren’t there
where the quiznos 
turns into a sushi joint
we pretend to not smell
the fresh bread under the miso 
we slurp in divorced silence
pretending to live in the same house 
waiting for the moment 
we can go into our rooms
take off all our clothes
and stop all this pretending 

stalking exes on my burner account in greece
a clairo cover of 
not a lot just forever 
by adrienne jenner
could kill me 
which is to say, 
sappho i see you 
across the seas 
knee deep in a 
lesbian pulp novel 
in santorini 
i see you in the trees
in eucalyptus,
those balmy leaves 
i see you near the cliffs
singing your siren song 
i see you holding her back
only by her thong 
i know love is deep i know it’s pure
but when you sing that song 
you have that lure 
no men could tie me to the mast 
to keep me from diving 
back into my past 

nap poem 
sleeping in my room 
i wonder if you hear them 
the neighbors watching movies 
the downstairs jumping rope
my boxes piling up 
full of my mother’s baggage 
does it emanate a smoke? 
crack open the window 
smoke a joint with a breeze 
light a candle, read my books
don’t forget these things 
water the plants, shut the door 
don’t listen to anyone else 
anymore 
lay your head down to rest 
just do fine
it doesn’t have to be your best 


new york poem
we are so back 
i go to the chase bank 
in chinatown again 
to deposit my clown bank 
the guy fishes out the hundreds
stuck in the plastic head
with a long silver sword 
my crap eyewear case
full of british coins 
clatters and the teller tells me
i could donate them to the library 
your money is a souvenir
i won’t be spending  
i withdraw from
your economy 
listening to mitski 
with baja blast hair 
going to free therapy 
because something bad happened to me 
and the grant people decided i deserve it now 
i go to five guys when i'm home sick 
the bodega guy gives me 
a shot of smoothie 
strawberry banana
it is so sweet 

yours indefinitely,

brooke

the town cryer

grant me the serenity

to accept the assholes i cannot change

the courage to change the one i can

and the wisdom to know it’s me

sitting in my airbnb in athens after a 30 minute youtube “stress melt” yoga class.

every single time i exercise and it makes me feel better, i get mad, then i get relieved. there are solutions. i have been in an overwhelemed state for the last month or so, and if you’ve been expecting a text, email, hang out, whatever from me, i just wanna say i’m sorry. cookie hasn’t been at her best.

i just finished my third wedding of the summer and i have to say— it is hard watching everyone be in love. sometimes i feel like a sad gay clown— no, i don’t have a meet-cute to share, but i can tell you the harrowing story of the time i let someone cheat on their girlfriend with me and how surprised i was when it blew up in my face. i can tell you the other time that happened too! noooo i promise i am a good person and believe in love. just hasn’t happened to me yet :)

all my straight friends are getting married and all my gay friends hate their jobs and it seems like everyone is melting under the pressure of the summer sun. is it so wrong to want to just have fun? everything has felt so heavy lately, so intense.

i was a bridesmaid for my sister’s wedding and it didn’t make sense to me how important everything seemed, how urgent. i am extremely type b, adhd, chaotic bisexual/lesbian vibes and i find it hard for people to be around me, while i simultaneously am trying to be at peace with who i am and how i navigate the world.

it is shocking to me to see people commit to a lifelong relationship when it feels like i am fucking up everything all the time. i recognize that i am 26 and this is exactly what i’m supposed to be doing- fucking up- but i am also allowed to be annoyed. it is very hard to type with the acrylic nails i got for my sister’s wedding but we prevail. i cannot believe people have written novels with acrylic nails. also, how are you supposed to take your contacts out? every single night i scream in the mirror until it shatters— WHY ME!!! i scream with blood shot eyes i’ve been scratching with my square iridescent plastic nails.

i feel simultaneously so young and so old. a 21 year old gay guy from detroit walked into a coffee shop i was in yesterday and kept trying to assure me i was not old, saying i didn’t seem 26, and then how he was so excited for 26-28, where he could go to his friends for wine nights, go to their jobs in the day, etc. i wanted to smack him. i do not want to be 21, and you could not pay me to go back.

when i was 21 i watched porn for the first time after moving out of the sorority house where i couldn’t handle living with 2 college cheerleaders in one small room while attempting to become a stand up comedian, get invited to fraternity invites, and mourn my parents’ recent divorce. it was all too much! the double life! i wasn’t even allowed to smoke weed there, so i had to steal my housemate’s weed pen and discreetly take puffs on the roof, hoodie on, earbuds in, listening to julia jacklin. i was dating a guy out of college and just learned how to cook chicken. my brain felt completely raw and so did my ♡. i said i am so glad to be 26, and i know, it is young.

i’m fighting with my mom like i’m 16 still, ignoring my bank account and putting everything on my credit card. i am trying, but i feel so far from a person someone should spend their life with, let alone a week on a trip together.

friends have been telling me “take a year off dating”, over and over and i never wanted to, but suddenly i find myself without a date, without a crush, without a text ping that makes my ♡ sing. it’s been 8 months of singlehood and i never really wanted it, but god was it needed. it’s the whole god doing for me what i can’t do for myself bullshit.

i want to be alone now, i like it. i took the day to be on my own while my friend goes on a sunset boat cruise. i have been singing karaoke musical theater tracks and eating cold vegetarian greek food leftovers, flipping through vintage magazines i’ve bought here, staring at my blue and green clothes on the drying rack. i like to see them all laid out like that, my little inventory.

i feel damaged, broken, guilty, spoiled, stupid, grateful, confused, pudgy, sexy, lethargic. i miss my therapist, mike. i miss my room, my bike, my friends. mostly i miss me.

that’s all for today. please buy my zine : ) i worked so hard on it and i want to write more about it, but i don’t feel like it. this felt like giving birth, it hurt, but god… is she beautiful. theres 27 queer poets in here along with over 65 writing/poetry prompts, 17 live poems and lots of my original collages! pdf is $15 and full mag (74 pages full color) is $30 including shipping. ill send stickers too! ILY

greece poem
everyone is asleep and i look
through the greek magazine 
searching for some place beautiful 
to put in my pocket 
cous cous for dinner
tourists for dessert 
doordash lasagna 
$30 tube of herpes medication
i have never been 
this young 

greece poem #2
i feel like 
little miss sunshine 
doing youtube yoga
catching my reflection
in the butt picture on the wall 
it turns me on until i notice 
a man's hairy foot in the frame 
i forget that mostly nude women 
are for men and not for me 
i push my stomach in when i sing 
like i learned in college
singing jason robert brown 
in front of much more talented people 
if i wanted to keep failing 
i would keep singing 
but what i want is a nap 
on the couch inside
to not brave the streets
but to still feel alive 

thanks love you, talk soon

brooke

I dont know if I know what love is, or if I’ve ever had it. But I desperately want to know— i’m looking for it everywhere i go— in stranger’s wallets on the subway, in the red rose petals that fall with summer heat, inside a ripe mango, scored to eat cubed. but the place i never suspected it creeped up and surprised me— in my phone late at night, sitting next to me watching I Think You Should Leave, laughing my same laugh, passing me a joint, waiting for me as I walked off stage.

My little sister, Enzo, was living in New York for the last year and a couple weeks ago moved back to California.

Enzo is 6 years my junior— they were born August 8, 2004 in room 4 and I remember being there, at the hospital, in my tweety bird t-shirt. I also remember my parents sitting me and my two other siblings down on my parents bed and telling us we were getting another sibling. I cried— as the middle child, attention was already spread so thin, I couldn’t risk giving up anymore. Not to mention our house only had 3 rooms for kids, and I didn’t want to share forever. My brother told my mom “god told me it’s going to be a boy”.

9 months later my mom gave birth to her third august baby, 6 days after my brother jake’s birthday as a belated gift. they named her “lauren faith finegold” because it was my parent’s faith in god that kept my parents together so they could have this fourth child. obviously, they are now divorced, and enzo and my middle names have become very ironic (mine is Ashlee because my parent’s middle names are Asher and Lee).

I became very attuned as an older sister. I remember remodeling the guest room into a nursery, painting the walls pale pink to prepare for our baby girl much to my brother’s dismay, even adding white wall paneling to the bottom half of the walls as if the entire room were a crib. I remember the changing station, the baby powder, the smell of fresh baby skin. she was so soft, and her fingers looked like the little tiny shrimp at the grocery store. It was like my bitty baby doll came to life, and I could watch it walk and talk. We had a green bathroom with a shallow green tub. The bathroom of course, was beach themed, and we had a kleenex cover that looked like a sand castle. i’d stand on a stool and brush my teeth in the mirror next to my siblings and help prepare the bath for enzo. luke warm water my mom told me. i wondered— why did Luke get to say how warm the water was? i would wrap enzo up in a towel and pick her up, strong for a 7 year old, brushing the bubbles off her face. for my first grade class i invented a baby bath tub with a shower handle attached that dispensed luke warm water. my teacher grinned, telling me it had already been invented. i didn’t care about inventing something— i already had the latest technology and that was a little sister, and it kept me entertained all day.

we had hand shakes— enzo would pull my pinky finger, then we would shake hands three times saying “shake, shake, shake, bam” and release our hands into a backward explosion. she was just a baby, but we had our own language, something no one understood. i would drink out of a glass, and give a little “aahh” sound after, so enzo started doing it too.

when enzo was 4, and i was 10, our older sister bailey turned 13 in late august, and during the week of her summer camp my mom and i went to work transforming enzo’s nursery into a cool girl teenage pad. we got a pink futon from pottery barn teen, we disassembled the crib and brought in a queen bed. enzo moved upstairs into a twin bed with a trundle, right next to mine. bailey came home and was so excited to have her own space, and i went from being the little sister to the big one overnight. what a promotion.

we had sleepovers every night, and i wish i remembered more. our room was a pale blue called “cinderella blue”, we had a slanted ceiling in our room— the one room upstairs— in the attic, and when guests came over the first thing they’d do in the morning was sit upright and bonk their heads on the ceiling. we’d share a familiar laugh, knowing better. outside our window we could hear jake bouncing the basketball, playing hoops for one, desperately yearning for a brother. below us was the garage, aka my dad’s man cave, where we’d listen to him play sympathy for the devil over and over until our ears bled and we jumped up and down on the floor to signal him to shut up. eventually we got rid of the twins with trundels and moved up to queens. probably before it was even close to necessary for enzo, but i was growing up at a much faster pace. i got angsty when i turned into a teen, realizing there was no other room for me to move into, and i’d have to share it with a baby. we repainted the room dark purple and i used duct tape to split the room in half, my side forbidden to enzo, despite having the window and the closet on my side. i remember one time our aunt and uncle came to town and slept in our room and when they opened their suitcase a pack of condoms shot out cartoonishly. gross. more sympathy for the devil. i’d babysit my younger siblings when my parents went out to see a warriors game or go out to dinner, and i’d sneak boys over to make out with in my room, or famously get fingered in a hoodie, while i locked my little sister outside my room, begging to grow up on my own pace without a baby sister dragging me back into childhood. i wanted boobs, i wanted boys attention, i wanted my own fucking room!

after years of blue prints and financial fluctuation, we decided the beach themed bathroom wasn’t quite our speed and we knocked the whole house down, to build our “dream home”. we moved into a creepy rental house and i can’t even tell you what enzo’s room looked like. i don’t remember ever going in there. i was 17 and had been wanting my own room for my whole life, but suddenly it felt so lonely and small in there. i wanted to sleep in the same room as enzo but i’d put up such a big fight to get my own space. the only major draw of a home remodel was the promise of me getting my own room, and now all i wanted was slanted ceilings, the echo of basketball on blacktop, and sympathy for the devil. baby toys with alphabets that sang and got stuck on the letter G, tiny tee shirts and piss covered pants, shoes that zipped up the sides and someone to follow me like a shadow.

we had my graduation party at that house, my request was for spaghetti, sushi, and bubble gum jelly bellies. everyone wrote letters to me in a book that was carved to look like a B. I had braces and wore a two piece coral set and heels in my own backyard. there were weird sculptures from the rental people and everyone asked what the metal tubes were, that they looked like intestines. my dad found a pack of cigarettes and asked me if i’d been smoking— i had to explain to him my foreign exchange student friend isidoro was from spain and had a penchant for chain smoking. as someone who backpacked europe after college and never shut up about it, he understood. enzo was 12, watching it all unfold, still so much of life at home to live.

i went to college, they were a child, we tried to facetime, things changed. i watched from a distance as they grew up in the house alone without me, jake and bailey, watched them deal with my parents’ divorce from ground zero, and i secretly tried to figure out who i was. they were the first person in my family i came out to, sitting in my dad’s man cave on the pool table. i wrote it down on a piece of paper, trying to get the courage to tell them.

i was shaking, and i knew it wouldn’t matter to them, but i was still so nervous. i told them i had to tell them something. they called me cookie, and i felt their love like i always had, even from a distance.

last year, they decided to leave santa barbara city college and give the big apple a try. i was ecstatic. they came with me everywhere, following me around like a shadow. yes they are a little shy, and take a second to open up, are a few inches shorter than me, and wear darker clothes, but enzo is the furthest thing from my shadow. if i am the sun they are the moon during an eclipse, and for the briefest moment during totality it is so special, it can be hard to look away.

they came with me to comedy shows and gave me notes on my set, cookie, try this as a punch line. it would always work, and i joked that in a few years, they’d be the one on stage, right beside me. they’d come with me to see bands they’d never heard of— i like them, they’re good. we saw Dehd in maria hernandez on a slightly rainy day, we sat on trash bags with my roommate maggie and ate pomegranate seeds from Bravo Fresh. someone gave us free topo chico. they’d whip out their graffiti pens to write “ENZO 24” anywhere we went, cheekily looking over their shoulder before doing it. they stayed up with me late at night, helping me design the graphics for my next comedy show. can i please be done? can this be the last round of notes? they’d do my every last edit, even if we stayed up until 2. i’d go over on their depressed days and help them clean their room, grocery shop for nourishing food. our depression manifested in the same ways, and taking care of them taught me how to take care of myself. i felt like my mom, cleaning will make you feel better. we laughed about how right she was.

we’d smoke weed and get sushi— where they would only order miso soup, rice and edamame, and put them all in a bowl together like we did as kids. we’d sit at the bar and talk with the bartender and laugh while our feet dangled from the stools. they used a fake id to go everywhere with me, and were always so cool about it. it reminded me of my younger self, using bailey’s ID to get into the comedy store and buying chocolate chip cookies for my 2 drink minimum. enzo would come to my roommate’s band’s shows and would meet some high profile new york socialite— only for them to message me the next day asking when we could hang with enzo again. my baby sister.

in january when i was really struggling, enzo would come over and just sit with me. it was comforting to sit in a room with someone else, in comfortable silence. i wished for the trundle again. i didn’t want them to go back to their apartment, i wanted them to stay here— enzo’s toys, enzo’s shoes, enzo’s teeth grinding at night.

enzo living in new york was my eclipse, and now they have to be their own sun.

i’d lived apart from enzo for so long— i didn’t anticipate their departure being hard for me.

two days before they left, i found myself inconsolable. i was having sobbing spells again, ones that once they started wouldn’t stop. i would look at photos of us on my phone like i was on an airplane going through a break up, and cry. i’d see their tag on my trashcan outside my house and cry. i’d call them just to hear their voice, and i’d cry. they didn’t cry once, and it felt like an embarrassing one sided break up, or a blubbering parent dropping their kid off at a freshman dorm. i didn’t know what was happening to me.

i went over to help them pack, and ended up laying on their bed the entire time sobbing under the covers, not helping at all. they laughed a little— cookie! it’s gonna be okay! i knew they were doing what was best for them, but i thought— what about me? what am i supposed to do? i wished i could sew them to my feet like peter pan.

their last day i went to their skateboard lesson, and watched them ollie and sweat and interact with the local skate kids— cursing with a 13 year old boy and drinking huge bodega water bottles. i sat their, in awe of this fully developed person i’d watch come to life from the moment of their birth. i knew what love was, and it was enzo.

really excited that this thursday is the second ever PIG Recital — a poetry is gay open mic where anyone can come read 3 minutes of poetry. the theme is “april showers bring may flowers” which is very town cryer coded. dress code is: florals for spring? groundbreaking. RSVP here

sitting wrapped in a huge target blanket eating a hash brown sandwich listening to “your body is a wonderland” trying to self soothe. sometimes ketchup is the only thing that reminds me of who i am.

my hairdresser recently told me when she met her fiance he “worked at plato’s closet and listened to jack johnson” and i feel like developmentally, that’s where i’m at. but now he makes a lot of money, has more evolved taste, and is getting married to my incredible hairdresser. #itgetsbetter

i am dipping a decently hard biscotti (stale or are they just like that?) (i’ve never eaten a biscotti on purpose), and asking myself a lot of questions. why am i breaking out so badly? do starface patches actually work or are they just expensive stickers? why did millie bobbie brown wear one on the drew barrymore show? how is she old enough to get married and i am still living with three roommates and eating ketchup to remember who i am?

wait sorry sunday morning just came on—- YEEEAAAhhhh!! ok this song has something in it…. it’s like crazy how a song can capture what a sunday morning feels like. i can practically smell the pancakes on the griddle… does anyone have positive memories from childhood? does anyone have memories at all? recently my director mentioned that the way i write about the past is so colored by the way i feel about life right now it can be hard to access the way i was feeling at the time. sometimes i feel that way about my childhood. my parents got divorced when i was 20 and up until then, i had a positive outlook on my childhood and good memories, but once the divorce began to unfurl it feel like it put a dark cloud over everything. so many ah-ha moments— oh yeah my dad did always have migraines on sunday mornings…

I think it’s hard to not let our present day perceptions change the way we view the past. it’s like the opposite of nostalgia.

ok google just schooled my ass. this is a beautiful lesson. maybe all we have is the present. definitely that is all we have. i do gratitude lists every morning and it has changed the way my brain functions. i am so obsessed with the tree outside my window i never thought a tree would bring me so much joy. i like feeling like my grandma who was obsessed with trees. she had this tree outside the kitchen window she called the “num num tree” where she had a little plate hanging on a branch and she’d put out food and treats for birds and any other animals that would find their way there. she once found this mean pitbull guard dog in her neighborhood who over time she slowly coaxed with steak and chicken and her soothing voice until he no longer was a guard dog. the owner was so mad at my grandma— but she wanted rough things to be soft. i wish she could see how i am trying to do to myself what she did to this pitbull.

i once confided in my church camp counselor that i didn’t let myself cry in front of my middle school friends because i had to maintain status as “queen bee”, obviously i was reading a lot of the clique books. what kind of mental illness did these YA books instill in me? i saw myself as massie but felt like a claire. if you get it you get it…

now i am trying to soften like butter on the counter top. but as i have learned the hard way, sometimes when you leave butter on the counter top for too long the rats will come eat it. i guess you can interpret that metaphor how you like.

how to find love in this city… i ponder as i listen to crash into me by dave matthews band.

i don’t know! for most of my life i have jumped from lover to lover and these days… i’m just sort of out here. i am finally ready to hold out for the real thing. i haven’t been monogamous since college! i’m 26 now— i’m no spring chicken! kidding, i know i’m so young and tight, but i can’t help but wonder… when will my time come? when will i have this beautiful, healthy romance full of wonder and partnership and even shared growth. i dont want something all encompassing anymore, i want to remain my own person and as they used to teach us in church— find someone who is at the same place in the race (towards jesus) as you are to run along side. i guess the finish line is death? ideally you die at the same time? i dont’ know man.

i want passion but more than that i want love. do any of us think we have ever been in love? i’ve said i love you to almost everyone i’ve dated and sorry if you’re reading this— but was i ever actually in love? or to quote a past lover of mine— or just in love with the idea of them?

there’s no way to know. i am looking forward to my favorite lesbian party tonight, i am looking forward to pride, and perhaps there will be some magic in the air.

this june i am living a farcical double life mrs. doubtfire style as i run from pride event to bridal shower to dyke march to straight wedding to gay poetry event. i am an ally to the straight and bridal community, but during pride does feel a little…. homophobic.

it’s so strange to imagine my mom at my age being married. everyone’s life is so different. and as my friend amy says— life is long, and i am simply a stick of butter on the countertop, waiting to be baked into cookies before the rats get me.

poemme time! i’ve attached a recording of me reading at the KGB Red Room Wednesday open mic hosted by my wonderful friend Jada who works on the news. after the mic we all stand outside and smoke and she goes into work at 10pm. feel free to listen along as you read or just listen. they also gave me the kindest intro so that’s a fun bonus. here you goooo : )

listening to viva la vida getting in touch with my own desire 
right here 
in this bodega 
the chips are lit up 
like a trap for high people 
or grubby children 
if i was hansel and gretel 
i’d be fucked
high off sativa at midnight thirty 
coming off the lesbian night 
it’s always a tuesday 
never a saturday 
i left magenta feathers
behind in the uber
for his wife to find 
i got on the wrong train 
on purpose
because i’m all about the journey 
man,
fuck the destination 
the only place that feels like home 
is the ocean and 
you know i can’t go there right now
wading waist deep in my powder blue dress
it’s see through and it’s mine
i’ll sweat through it if i have to
and i sill 
i’m sunburnt like a tourist
and the nonbinary tutor at joyface 
clocked me as a typewriter poet
i spoke spanish today 
i met a nice father 
i met a fan 
you know i’d rather 
sit and watch the turtles
eat hot dogs out of a 
man’s bare hands 
than just about anything else
i’m clocking in
to right now
i’m perfectly 
on time 

eating frosted flakes at canal street serving c u next tuesday 
on this fine martes 
a man wears moon boots in may
i wear clogs to the club 
we are all allowed
to follow our bliss tonight 
here in manhattan 
where it never snows
and the sun never stops shining
where men spit in the train tracks
and lesbian pop stars play in bars 
if we all have adhd
do any of us? 
i have an emotional attachment
to my minion yellow suitcase
it’s my transitional object 
every train, plane and taxi 
yellow in the rain stricken streets 
my light at the end of the tube 
it’s that time of night
where they clean the tiles with bleach and water 
and i think about green like you said you did 
when all i could think of was blue 
there it came, all gold and glittering and folded in the sky 

listening to high school stoner music 
imagining shapes and colors
staring at candy apple red and white jordan’s 
holding my turquoise bike 
C train going north 
it’s all up from here 
literally 
uptown
girls in their black clothes 
kings and avenues 
we’re perfect in periwinkle 
enjoying the one week
we can wear jeans and a tee 
just a blazer
a sugar coating on our already 
perfect lives
we’re living it,
sleeping upside down,
beds the size of coffins 
sleeping on stilts
waiting for the hurricane to pass 
you know there’s a reason 
storms are named after women 
they go in alphabetical order 
to trick you into thinking
predictability and order are in store 
we talk about you 
like we talk about katrina 
silver lining a new city,
seeing new streets 
like they’re gold paved 
i’ll always have a gold rush
running in my veins 
panning for flashes of light 
boiling green tea, 
holding out for the day 
i’ll find a nugget 

that’s all angels!!!

hope to see you thursday at pig recital and if not something special real soon.

also— been accepting custom typewriter poem orders and if you want one, reply to this email with what you want your poem to be about and your mailing address. venmo me $20 to @brooke-finegold or if you need to do something else we can figure it out. PEACE AND LOVE TO ALL FOREVER!!! XOXOOO brooke

you know when you’re watching a show and you’re like UGH! I HATE THIS CHARACTER! I DO NOT TRUST HER! and it’s like ok the writers are eating… literally they are eating the groceries they bought because they are employed. they did their job! ever since my life has become quiet (healing, celibacy.) i have been focused on mainly two things: organizing my room and ugly betty. i dont even really smoke weed anymore (i say this as i am high). i’ve been getting high off the spring rain out my window, listening to laura marling as the lightning cracks and i laugh a maniacal laugh of inner peace. YOU JUST TRY AND TAKE IT!

brooke— how did you get there? how did you reach inner peace? well honey first of all, who knows what it’s going to feel like when i wake up. but right now? it feels AMAZING! i have put photos of myself as a child up on my bedroom window and i literally tell her i love her. IT WORKS! i do my stupid morning pages EVERY DAY and i go to my gay little TWELVE STEP MEETINGS and i go to THERAPY. and guess fucking what?!?! IT FUCKING WORKS!!!! AHHHH!! this revelation is DEVASTATING TO THE MASSES. NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR THIS!!

this morning i drank a green juice! and i did my gratitude list! and i feel GOOD!!??! jesus fucking christ. we’re all gonna be bankrupt. no one is going to work once we all feel peace. the Man wants us to be Upset so we Buy Stuff. Well guess what, “Man”, I’m happy and I still wanna buy shit!!!

i have made my personality so much of being sad and having a horrible dating life now i am feeling good and not dating anyone and i’m like wait… so who am i. now i have to look inward? and be like what do i care about who am i etc…. what is truly meant for me will find me etc…. this shit is so wild. i really feel in my body and soul that i’m growing up. how fucking bizarre.

i’ve been collaging a piece called “tequila sunrise” it’s a groundbreaking piece with naked women and alcohol but it’s groundbreaking when i do it because i’m a woman and i’m making them lesbians in a female gaze way. i really will cut out fruit and naked women and place them together and i’m like well i’m doing something no one has ever even fucking dared to do. no one has ever dared to do something this subversive yet chill. i’d describe my collage work as “cloudy with a chance of meatballs x bellesa”. i had a dream a dear friend of mine was… and i hate to be graphic…. sucking on his own penis.

this friend will go unnnamed but safe to say i will never see him the same again. next time i see him in the streets, he goes by one name and one name only— LEGEND!

my friend told me they had watched porn of a man sucking his own penis, and they jerked off to it and felt weird after. this is the kind of representation we’ve been needing in hollywood…

first i learned that THAT EXISTS. you dont even need to remove ribs or anything. second, i learned that i have a true friend, who will tell me the porn they’re watching AND how they felt weird after. normalize this!

one of my dear best friends and i used to watch lesbian porn in college together, not in a sexual way just like, sitting in the mcdonald’s parking lot eating mcflurry’s genuinely asking ourselves— hmmm. do we like this? the answer— yes!

this moment actually influenced this collage a lot. what if girls could be eaten like an ice cream topping? how delightful!

adriana lima says that tico berries are what makes her so beautiful. well honey i’ll buy the lot. i dont really spend money on beauty products, but i decided i’m too talented to age so i probably will look like this forever. my friend (32) is urgently messaging me to wear sunscreen after seeing my back peel like string cheese in miami. oh yeah i’m supposed to write about my trip to miami… get over it it’s coming.

i’m really just feeling silly and goofy and you know what? i had a really fucking brutal winter and spring is giving me HOPE and SUNSHINE and so i am going to try to capture it while i can. i love you all. never forget that tico is LIFE!

spring awakening  
i’m just a girl 
waiting for her life to be changed 
by another girl walking down the street
some couples are straight
i have to accept that
my socks have berries on the heels
that’s my little secret 
everything is a con 
for money 
especially love 
i heard some new york 
mitzvahs cost hundreds
of thousands of dollars 
and that I have 
an infections energy 

NOVEMBER 2019 
remember when we were children 
who were almost mothers? 
i would skip anything for you, 
especially class
It’s still funny they played jazz
There’s no spotify playlist 
called “The Clinic” 
he would’ve been 3 
it’s easier if we say he
I can’t believe you grew up
and God was allowed to be anything 
your freedom excites me, 
your naked breasts and no curtains 
boa feathers always, glitter and
that pile of clothes 
we drank pink wine on Tuesdays 
lesbian porn on an iPhone 8 
in the McDonald’s parking lot
curious on a Wednesday
we didn’t know ourselves
but we knew each other 

gold fish meal 
i used to be in love with
my friend who was in love with 
her hair and in hate 
with her body 
we would climb trees and 
jump off of them and listen 
to that playlist 
smitten and you know it 
and though i didn’t know it 
i could feel it 
with every glitter breath 
gold fish meal 
gummy star surprise 
5 people were in love with her
at a time 
excluding me 
i didn’t count 
myself 
but i’d write her letters 
every day when she was away 
i’d tell her about my days 
how school dragged on without her 
she drew me a photo of her 
learning to love her body 
for my 8th grade graduation 
all i wanted was for her to
see herself 
the way i saw her 
that’s how it’s always been 
hasnt it? 
and the way it will always be 
when he gets down on one knee 
and she promises him forever 
while i sit at my desk 
still writing her letters 

trying to get a photo of the sunrise but a man’s flat bill hat is ruining the shot 
so i’ll write a poem 
everyone is asleep like adult babies
speaking up so their voices are heard 
we are all sardines waiting to be 
swept back to sea 
we are in a post card of a place 
we paid in our own currency 
to be pointed out things,
snacks, directions, blankets 
all to see the unknown
to be alone together 
in the comfort of a sprinter van 
i rise with the sun today 
stomach empty enough 
for butterflies to take over 
monarchs fly south for winter 
they stop me in the street 
as if to remind me 
to look at the colors 
that when the rising sun 
wears morning clouds
like a frivolous shawl 
she shimmies up 
giving us a peep show 
she emerges fantastically 
a breaching whale 
heavenly beams shoot 
out her face 
it is no wonder 
we need glasses to see her 
at her most vulnerable 
she is a lover 
nudging me sleepy 
cooing in my ear 
honey i made breakfast 
she is syrupy sweet 
i will always oblige 
fresh squeezed orange juice 
jam, the kind i grew up on 
the smell of bacon 
the promise of a new day
fluffy biscuits, soft legs 
this one will stay 

that’s all my friends <3 peace and love <3

brooke