Kari Pindoria

in defence of the laugh track

The laugh track knows his parents are disappointed. You could’ve been anything, but chose to be background. They’re not wrong — the laugh track always stands like a coat rack at parties, just waiting for a punchline. Spends Sundays at the pharmacy, picking up his prescription of Sertraline, or on LinkedIn to find a real job doing marketing for a dog food company. The laugh track is banned from funerals, libraries, baptisms and awards ceremonies. Apparently, not everything is funny. Funerals have to happen, like weather or the economy. Do you know what it’s like to be good at just one thing? Even when he wants to cry, he can only laugh. Every night alone, on the couch, his last sound.

Kari Pindoria is a writer from North London. Her poetry has been previously published in And Other Poems, Propel, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Unbroken journal and various anthologies. You can find her on Twitter @karipindoria.

Kari wrote the following about her poem:

I was rewatching Curb Your Enthusiasm and noticed that modern sitcoms don’t use the laugh track anymore. So, the poem started with a very silly, absurd thought: what if the laugh track was actually sad about dying? I really enjoyed playing around with this in the prose poem’s matter-of-fact tone and imagining the laugh track as a real person, just like any of us.