Cover Photo: Photograph by Joshua Smelser/Flickr
Photograph by Joshua Smelser/Flickr

In Defense of the Low Bar: An Ode to Everclear

Kurt Cobain would not approve, but privately I wondered if there wasn’t space for a beloved burnished thing in my new and improved pop pantheon.

Tragic KingdomEnema of the State

So Much for the AfterglowSparkle and Fade

I am still living with your . . . ghost,

and

Don’t worry, that’s just my heroPlus, I'm pretty sure if he met me in real life, we’d fall in love.

Almost Famouscool,

You do what they tell you to do/you say what they say/you try to be everything to everyoneI will never be safe, I will never be sane, I will always be weird inside, I will always be lame.was

buy—

right

of

boys

sating

wrongwrong“it wasn’t easy for me to be a scared white boy in a black neighborhood.”

bopped.

not

Brittany K. Allen is a Brooklyn-based writer, performer and library goblin. Her prose appears or is forthcoming in Catapult, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Kenyon Review Online, and Longreads, among other places, and her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her stage plays have been produced and developed at Portland Center Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and elsewhere.