Karaoke: Encore


Some People Think they're Owed a Bond Girl

Karyna McGlynn

to bend over whenever. This belief reaches / quietly into their bone marrow.


Poetry, Fiction, & Nonfiction

Ghosts of Scene Sites Past

Seán Carlson

On an external hard drive stored in a closet somewhere at home, I have a photo from the first concert I set up, a moment captured on a roll of film and later scanned and sent via email.

Last Christmas

Colin Ainsworth

The last time I was here I was really in here. I have been here. I know that I have been here. These people are in my home and they are watching my TV.

Well, It’s Not Like It Used to Be

Patrick Duane

I was born March 24th, the same day as Harry Houdini, so my family used to take annual trips to the Harry Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

After The Reading, A Man Asks If I Hate My Father

Janiru Liyanage

nother time, a couple pressed me to / forgive my family, they said all the best art draws from love, not anger / but I barely heard them over the Frank Ocean song

RUNNING UP THAT HILL (A DEAL WITH GOD)

After Kate Bush
Monica Rico

It claws / it doesn’t begin with an itch / a single hurt / a pointed branch

When Beyonce Hits, And Sunset is Pink And Baby So Baby Blue

Cassandra Whitaker

What’s beyond the two lights at the edge / of the bay bridge tunnel blinking / out of turn, one a bit more butch / than the other

Let’s Play College

Karyna McGlynn & Fez Avery

Alright fine: let’s play Chubby Bunny / naked in the sprinklers, I said.

dionysus is the only sober person at karaoke

E.B. Schnepp

super impose me neon, berry-tinged / fingertips left smudges across everything I touched.

The Moss Takes Us to an 80s Sex Shop

Karyna McGlynn & Fez Avery

But we arrive to find it’s been co-opted by a cocktail bar. / The Moss wants to bounce but we’re already here.

My Massage Therapist Asks if the Pressure’s Too Much

Abbie Kiefer

Let me tell you, Lil—I’m here to be borne down on.

Here, a Brindis for All Who Weep Alone

Rocio Anica

I raced past the kennels each time. So many noses pressed against the chain link. Others cast their pink, brown, black noses downward, their beautiful tails curling inward or twitching a sad little wag as they turned away.

Some People Think they're Owed a Bond Girl

Karyna McGlynn

to bend over whenever. This belief reaches / quietly into their bone marrow.

Entomb/In Tune: Earl Sweatshirt’s Black Lyric Mode

Joy Priest

But for me, Earl’s short poems (sometimes, I’m willing to concede, laid over monotonous beats) are speculative and visionary. They map a modern mind, short in attention, fighting to be audible above our cyber industrial reality—its alienating information storm of iPhone notifications. They take us beyond the day’s meaning-emptied habitual speech.


From the Archives

2 Poems

Louise Mathias

Vexed light on dune evening primrose. The mineral lands denuded, / this still hurts.

Self-Portrait as Mother as Nature Documentary

Chelsea Krieg

The shoebill pesters its mother for a drink, says David Attenborough.

Wheels and Bushings

Maureen Langloss

It was six o'clock in the morning when I started collecting clocks, and now it's 9:37. 10:37. I mean it's 10:00cm. These clocks are all wrong. Time is spilling out of them and getting everything. . . getting everything. . . that word when the clothes are on the floor and crumbs are in your bed and you've spilled wine and yelled at George.

WE PRAY AT THE CAST IRON SKILLETS OF OUR GRANDMOTHERS

Shaina Phenix

We leave our offerings. We prepare the meat the way / we were taught, snap the wing, relish the song of crack