Karaoke: Encore
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. 
Poetry, Fiction, & Nonfiction
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.
Let’s Play College
Karyna McGlynn & Fez Avery
Alright fine: let’s play Chubby Bunny / naked in the sprinklers, I said.
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
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.
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.
dionysus is the only sober person at karaoke
E.B. Schnepp
super impose me neon, berry-tinged / fingertips left smudges across everything I touched.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Some People Think they're Owed a Bond Girl
Karyna McGlynn
to bend over whenever. This belief reaches / quietly into their bone marrow.
From the Archives
Potatoes
Marcela Sulak
this once-heretical root, domesticated / for latkes. My calendar's terribly reduced.
Pareidolia
Chris Ware
For a while I thought maybe something was wrong with me, like you sort of hope there is when you're a teenager.
Return
Karla Clark
Back home is wider than my legs lost the beat when viper sting / hid your keys ‘tween his fingers and though he snorin’ I ain’t / lightfeet ‘nough to get ‘em you gon’ have to chain lang along
A Houston Crease in my Brain: A Conversation with Joshua Burton and Anthony Sutton
Anthony Sutton
I have known Joshua Burton since 2014 when we attended the Boldface Workshop at the University of Houston.