I’m listening for clues in amoeba beats
and pulsar pulses (micro-macro crucible),
for an infrared hint, an electromagnetic
message, some static frequency sounding
like the alchemy that turns pill to powder.
You taught me how to conceal the signs
of hotbox smoke, not to water flowers
on their petals during warm afternoons,
feed horses and cows carrots flat-handed,
every vulgarity and slur man ever knew.
Now every cloud is a star hung by yarn
I’d like to throw series of serrated discs at,
illustrate how little it takes to create chaos,
how magnificent it feels being struck
by a haze of silver-tailed celestial shells.
First thing they do in county jail is take
your belt and shoelaces—it’s unoriginal;
the first worst thing a man did was simple,
it involved a snake, blame, and apple: don’t
you smell the dissected fertilizing our garden?
You taught me how to toss eggs at trucks,
about going up the street instead of across
the road, a sling-rock method to hurt and
take eyes from giants, exactly how to skin
a snake so it can’t come back and slip in.
I’m displayed in ultraviolet mess—stickman
loping among a grid on a screen invisible
to the naked eye—and I’m naked on stage
with a Uzi in my hand, screaming, cheers
precede standing ovation, I’m in the audience.
The last thing you see isn’t a flash of life,
it’s only the floor you fall on. But it’s better
to yell fire in a crowded theater than open
fire inside of one, so I suppose I’ll let them
believe you believed in anything at all.
— From rural Michigan, Nicholas Alti is a bartender in Atlanta who holds an MFA from the University of Alabama. He is interested in horror, arcana, silliness, and surrealism. His poetry is in The Horror Zine, DIAGRAM, Star*Line, BlazeVOX, and elsewhere. Find all his published work at 3bluntzatonce.com. This poem will be featured in the chapbook Inhale the Ghost, published later this year by Spoon River Poetry Review.