Karaoke: Encore
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 
Poetry, Fiction, & Nonfiction
Let’s Play College
Karyna McGlynn & Fez Avery
Alright fine: let’s play Chubby Bunny / naked in the sprinklers, I said.
Some People Think they're Owed a Bond Girl
Karyna McGlynn
to bend over whenever. This belief reaches / quietly into their bone marrow.
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.
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.
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.
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
dionysus is the only sober person at karaoke
E.B. Schnepp
super impose me neon, berry-tinged / fingertips left smudges across everything I touched.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.