The actress
The batshit catalyst
The spoiled brat
The narcissist
Mommyās child
Bonnieās employer
The most selfish friend
The indecisive twentysomething
The ambitious auditioner
The adult ingenue
The space case
The one who is always late
The flake
The girlfriend you canāt count on
The girlfriend you can take advantage of
The self-absorbed whiner
The gutless tearjerker
The stunted mirror lurker
The same olā same olā
The one who got away
The one who is going away
The fiery liar
The uninspired for hire
The networker extraordinaire
The soul-broke millionaire
The horror movie captivator
The serial masturbator
The serial cereal eater
The best fucking kisser
The second best fuck since Tinder
The temper igniter
The nameless woman
Amber Tamblyn
The abortionist
The fortuneless extortionist
The breadwinner
The dead ringer
Fake Emma Stone
The poet
The author
died during the writing of this book.
Facts about Brittany Murphy for Poem journal entry June 22, 2010
ā¢ She died in the shower.
ā¢ Her film Uptown Girls grossed $44,617,342.
ā¢ Her film Abandoned was released posthumously, straight to DVD.
ā¢ My old agent told me no one was allowed to call her house before 10:00 A.M.
ā¢ She was 5' 2" tall.
ā¢ She was diagnosed with a heart murmur as a child.
ā¢ She was dropped from the film Happy Feet due to rumored drug abuse.
ā¢ Her cause of death was pneumonia.*
ā¢ Brittany wrote poetry.
I took a break from writing about the dead
and drinking from writing about the dead
to walk around my childhood neighborhood.
Everythingās for rent. Or for sale, for ten
times the amount itās worth.
Palm trees are planted in front of a mural
of palm trees under the Ocean Park Bridge.
In the painting, the metal horses of a carousel are breaking
free and running down the beach. Why didnāt I leave
my initials in cement
in front of my parentsā apartment in the eighties?
Nikki had the right idea in ā79.
I walk by a basketball court, where men play
under the fluorescent butts of nightās cigarette.
I could have been any of their wives,
at home, filling different rooms in different houses
with hopeful wombs. Agreeing on paint color
samples with their mothers in mind.
Iāll bet their wives let their cats go out
hunting at night like premonitions of future sons.
They will worry, stare out the front window,
pray that privilege doesnāt bring home bad news
like some wilted head of a black girl in nascent jaws.
To say nothing of the owl whoās been here for years. I hear him
when Iām trying to write about the deaths Iāve admired.
I hear him when the clothed me no longer recognizes
the naked. I hear him while writing and shitting and sleeping
where my motherās seven guitars sleep.
I hear him in my parentsā house,
their walls covered in my many faces,
traces of decades of complacence.
My childhood neighborhood is a shrine to my success,
and Iām a car with a bomb inside, ready
to pull up in front of it and stop
pretending.
date: Tue, Jan 12, 2009 at 1:27 PM
subject: Saturnās return.
. . . I know this is gonna be a bad year for me. Last year was a bad year for all my friends and I felt for them. And I felt mine coming. And here it is. Iām just going to embrace it and hope a spark ignites.
I think I could very possibly be heading toward a full-scale breakdown in the next few months. I know, this is out of nowhere, right? Iāve been hiding it, I think. Even from myself. I am so creatively low and impotent, I know I have to make a move but in what direction . . . I donāt know. Where do I start? Get rid of Momās tchotchkes in my house? Get rid of
? Fire my agency? Go to London with David for a month and get some clarity or come back to L.A. for a month and find some clarity? What the fuck is clarity? Can I just go the way of Brittany Murphy and say fuck it, do drugs until I drop and call it a day? Whatās the point of takin...
