Mallory Whitten's poems & stories take such unique note of the strange & depressing aspects of contemporary American life that they often feel like dreams. At the same time affectless & deeply emotive, these poems & stories take account, with something like a stenographer's prowess, of the anthropologically immense complexity & absurdity of everything happening all at once: prescription drugs, great-grandparents, the judicial system, upper middle class candy stores, elementary school janitors, gentrification, iguanas, binge drinking, anxiety attacks, vague social structures, ad nauseam.