By Matthew Thomas Bernell

Featured Art: 2130, Site Study by Brooke Ripley

Does the last chorus include a rose
or heart-shaped Armageddon
dust cloud? How tender
was your lover’s touch,

if ever? Do you stay up,
fireside, listening for a howl
or yip with which to tune your beat
Gibson, sooty fingers twisting

tarnished tuners slowly, scared
a snap will be the end
of it all? No more strings, no
more accompaniment. Or

are you about to upload yourself,
the last embodied homo sapiens,
levitating, tinkering with a vintage
synthesizer one note at a time?

Have incandescent whirring
contraptions replaced mixers
and interfaces except in robot-guided
music museums? Have we reached

the singularity? Or are you cut
by a lonely glass shard wind
from the bent, grim
horizon? When your jaw opens

and the vocal cords start
to vibrate, what
is the first word? Something short,
heartfelt? Like Don’t or Oh?

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Matthew Thomas Bernell holds degrees in creative writing, Spanish, and philosophy from Purdue University, where he works as an advisor in the Honors College. As a busy student in Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers, he fills his free time with strategy games, music, and excursions with his wonderful family. “Questions for the Singer of the Last American Folk Song” is his first publication.