Karaoke: Encore


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.


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.

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.

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.

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.

Some People Think they're Owed a Bond Girl

Karyna McGlynn

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

Let’s Play College

Karyna McGlynn & Fez Avery

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

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.

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.

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

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

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


From the Archives

The Evangelist

Samuel Kolawole

He never finished a performance without making a prediction. His predictions, if right, would immediately boost his prestige and reverence so much so that when he passed his offering bowl around afterwards people would be more than willing to part with their hard-earned cash.

Ellipses and the Unspeakable in Fady Joudah’s […]

Gemini Wahhaj

Fady Joudah’s newest poetry collection […] (Milkweed Editions, March 2024), written during the bombardment of Gaza from October to December 2023, marks the loss of language during an ongoing genocide.

FINDING PHANTASIA

Sara Deniz Akant

But come on, even Eve ate a dead baby dino. / Adam was still munching on his apples like a dweeb.

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.