Karaoke: Encore


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

Poetry, Fiction, & Nonfiction

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

Self Portrait. A Boy in His Mother’s Clothes Singing Madonna’s “Live To Tell”. At Night. Alone.

Cassandra Whitaker

A bag of snakes, the hole inside / me.

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

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.

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.

Let’s Play College

Karyna McGlynn & Fez Avery

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

From the Archives

Cheerio Petals

Amanda Auerbach

The color yellow and the red heart on the box remind me parts / of childhood are nice not / embarrassing. Does that include eating / cheerios with fingers?

Secretary

Nance Van Winckel

...the scritch-scratch of No Remedy passing first under the fall of sighs before the bridge of suicides, meaningless beneath the blue feather tips of kingfisher who shuns the deeper blue...

Spread

Caitlyn GD

The morning of Claire's funeral, I lie naked on the table and wait for her mourners to arrive. Thomas scrapes a knife against whetstone in the kitchen. When he appears above me, the blade glints harsh in his hand. It's all I can see. To minimize the pain, he explains with a paternal smile. I smile too.

Seasonal Without Spring: Summer

Andrés Cerpa

Was that season artery or vein? when the days stretched like Broadway, & the nights undid our shirts – the temperature so slight you could raise your arms in flight & feel nothing, the body as air. But there was also the need for hurt. And dusk: a ghost of a boy tempted to feel his weight, to put his palm to the depth, touch the pupil, the dead turbine of god’s one good cataracted eye.