Percocet Summer

Inspired by a rainbow array of drug fiends and fiended-over druggies, Percocet Summer encompasses the rush of the solstice, odd obsessions, and other crushables (people and pills and moods). From Florida sweat to Georgia peach sweetness, NYC high-rollers to skidding-by wannabes, these 35+ illustrated poems cover all the shady crevices of a summer well-wasted. We're talking the lows of eating disorders and intervention, to the throes of psychedelia and romance, then the in-betweens of internet celebrity and international/dimensional travel. Gas station syringes and cotton candy softness, rap-fast slang to gushy Valentine verses, cheeky loves to sophisticated manipulators.This collection blurs dirty realism and noir like a Lana Del Rey love song. This is the first installment of the four-part series, Seasonal Dissociation: Poetry for Distancing Dates and Doses. Other titles include Cracked Leaves & Autumn Lines, Citrus Springs, and Aurora Shards of Winter. This is Paige Johnson's debut poetry book. She put together and featured in the short story collections Slut Vomit: An Anthology of Sex Work and In Filth It Shall Be Found. She's working on her third novel, Where Me & The Vultures Live, about a lonely Miami cam-girl who lives out of a motel. The first chapter of such appears in Anxious Nothings (Anxiety Press, 2022) alongside many illustrated, ironically erotic stories and essays. Poems featured: Circular Motions, Garter Belts in the Garden, Bioluminescence, Sunshine Idol, An Icebox in Brooklyn, Fire Escape Sunsets, Circling Saturn, Soulspun, Sweetwater Talker, Carpet-bagging, Phone Sex, Super 8, eBait, Jumping Satellites, SWIMing w/ Sharks, Fishscale, Morning Glory, Beneath the Shadow & Lo(wer), Al Fresco, Rock Candy Renegade, Bubble Wand Waif, Tilted, Blackout Dates, How Did I Get Here?, The Big Peach Pit, Campsite Skin, Nightshade, The Scent of a Woman, New Development, Svedka Blue, Etizolamb, Numb Gum Days, Painkiller, Don't Daydream, Strawberry Panic, Hollywood(, FL), Breakthrough Dose.