Breathy voice, run 

through tape delay 

to make the words 

as woozy as the one 

who sang them, and 

sometimes, because

of this the words got 

lost inside the warble, 

like sound inside a tunnel, 

too varied and too 

quickly changing—

how it felt, and yes, 

still feels, to wake again, again, 

and often, somehow, to get lost 

before even putting the kettle on, 

sitting for hours, stuck completely still, 

while elsewhere the mind struggles 

to climb its own muddy embankment—

but in the muzzy murmuring 

of voice pulled back 

and tripping over 

echo, I found 

an invisible grotto,

made only of sound, 

to call echo into—echo 

against the din 

of regulars bent 

over bar, high-tops, and pool tables, 

raising their voices 

to compete with all 

the others, one of which 

was mine, amplified 

on stage and run 

through tape delay 

to make it woozy 

and to try to 

show—was that it?—show

you something— echo 

—something that you’d have to 

come inside to see?—

to hear, I mean, 

and it was more

like hiding, crawling 

deeper into the resounding 

hollow, and 

anyway, delay 

is also a common 

stress response, 

and freezing—even tonic immobility, apparent death—

a more acute 

expression of this 

stress response, 

so that the life in danger may be saved

by its approximation to death, 

which the biologist 

Georges Pasteur referred to 

as a form of self-mimesis

—here’s an impression of myself, but dead—

and on stage, singing 

breathily through 

wavering music 

and delay, I did

my best 

impression of myself, 

but dead—

couldn’t help it—

come and find me—

but this isn’t insight, it’s just two things 

that share a name: delay—and furthermore, 

when faced with the inevitable, 

the body of the animal 

in danger releases chemicals 

to deliver it 

from pain 

as it goes limp and terminal 

in a predator’s mouth

—and me, I only had two drink tickets—

though to be clear, 

this wasn’t stage fright,

but a sense of the threat 

of the whelm and thus 

a fright of the whelm

and that fright of the whelm 

stood on stage and sang, 

here’s an impression—

and sang into the pit—

echo—

an impression of myself—

sang into the grotto—

which was only sound—

myself, but dead—

echo—myself, but belated—

and here I am mourning—

look at it—look inside—

sang with delay, 

and the sound stayed 

in the room for the time 

that it takes 

for an amplified voice 

in a bar to decay.

Published January 16, 2022

Alexandria Hall's debut poetry collection Field Music (Ecco, 2020) was selected by Rosanna Warren as a winner of the National Poetry Series. She holds an MFA from NYU and is currently pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. She also makes music and is a founding editor of Tele-. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the LARB Quarterly Journal, The Yale Review, DIAGRAM, and BOAAT, among others.

Mary Shah uses oil paint and watercolor to weave visceral memory-scapes evoking atmospheres both imagined and concrete. Her paintings focus on light, space and time, with a specific interest in how one's consciousness attaches and identifies itself within those combined contexts. She was born in Glen Cove, New York in 1984. She earned her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2007. She was director of Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. from 2008-10, 2013-19. Her work has been presented in group and solo exhibitions since 2004, and is in private collections across the United States. She was selected by Michael Rose as one of the artists to follow in 2021 and included in the eponymous online exhibition. She is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art in New York and has been showing with him since 2015.