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.