Joshua Mehigan reads during Popsicle Festival, a literary event held this past weekend at a steamy Market Hotel. — Photo by Paul Cox

It’s in the 90s in the tunnel of Broadway, the air bronchially humid. Grab a drink at Mr. Kiwi’s on the way up because Market Hotel may be back in action but it’s still not the sort of establishment to pamper its patrons with special atmosphere. Air conditioning isn’t DIY; fans collected off the sidewalks are DIY. The air we breathe is from the streets too, swampy vapor gathered through two square barred windows that you never knew this place had. One window is auditioning as a J-train platform.

“This is like the least amount of reverb a microphone has ever had on it at Market Hotel, huh?” Maybe, and it’s also the furthest the venue has been from the likelihood of a police bust-up. It’s no coincidence that this is the first time most of us have been here since the April crackdown, and it’s for North Brooklyn’s first literary arts festival rather than, say, a wild Lightning Bolt gig.

Popsickle brands itself as the first festival of its kind in the borough’s north, but the component parts are hardly new. It’s a joint venture of a half dozen local reading series who decided to come together on one weekend-long bill: Body Actualized Control, Supermachine, Stain, Crowd at Cafe Orwell, Poetry Time at Space Space, and the Bushwick Reading Series “at Bushwick Library, on Bushwick Avenue, in Bushwick.” If there’s a scene, this is it.

Saturday is the hottest. There’s the variety one expects from a category as open ended as “literary arts”: video/poetry/music with Dreamboat Crusaderz, PowerPoint on Wittgenstein, blogging on sex, and a Malayan pantun poem made of spam. There are also, thankfully, real popsicles. Organizer Alaina Stamatis (of this event, of Body Actualized Control, and of Market Hotel goings-on in general) takes her own turn telling us about her life as a maternity-wear fan. Eddie Hopely reads some somber nonsense and throws his shoes in the trash. Two high points come in late. Jordan Michael Iannucci reads a series of Lost fan fiction gone honest. Then Jarrod Shanahan takes a break from selling his Death Panel zine in the back and shares an ode to Douglass, a commentator on Foucault found in blue pen in a used copy of The Order of Things. The sense of humor and banality in these two readings is part of a strong thread throughout, though Nicole Trigg is a notable exception: less detached and more earnest, but no less an engaging reader. So much is in the voice.

Sunday is also the hottest. Less messing around and more straight poetry. Evan Burton reestablishes the self-deprecating tone with Employment (to the William Tell Overture) and commercial hip-hop haikus. Supermachine pals Ben Fama, Natalie Lyalin, Emily Pettit and James Copeland pass around their shared chapbooks on rapid fire. The final early evening slot belongs to Stain, whose readers seem a hair more experienced, maybe even mature. Dan Magers (“I’ve seen everything that’s funny on the internet”), Leigh Stein (“I don’t have states of mind, I only have sweater sets”), and Joshua Mehigan (fire, cruelty, aging, and disappointment) make sure that we stay just as down at the end.

Only now does the heat start to break – a rain shower outside. Surprisingly, the blanket of indoor heat didn’t drive anyone away early; it didn’t feel like an endurance test but a necessary penance. Through most of the performances the air was heavy with words of time wasted on pop culture, wasted on hope, wasted on playing “wisest wizard” with NYU kids. Childhood and the failure of adulthood continue to be the two overriding preoccupations of the people in the room. Writers can wear their self-disappointment on their sleeves, and they do, and why not? Maybe – to update the slogan – if you’re not regretful, you’re not paying attention.