Lapsarian
Agate
eyes, amethyst rictus: I’m the shiny beautiful, the
gaslight ghost
with
a pulsing heart in one hand and
a handful of residuals. You can
see
the skull of my first and last afterlife between splayed fingers. Go ahead,
you
can see my chakras are ammonites tonight.
A
misdirected humanoid
mistaken for tender lamb
tied
to a lamppost on the dirt street. All windows nailed shut, all doors
barricaded,
red
ribbon round my neck and they say there are things that walk the night here.
I’d find
you wings had I known; I’d mend your wings could I sew.
My dogmeat
body smells baroque—
I’m the
great constellation aorta, I hold the whole heart beating, I hold
night
collapsing into day.
Bernini’s
Faun
teased
by children, except not sculpted marble in a museum,
an obsidian goat’s head on a wooden
stake
in Romania. Come
eclipse! I’m the forest of impaled bodies, already the flesh
of Wallachian mythology.
Flying Dutchman
420:
Off I go
assassinating, set cosmic sail for those translucent machines
mistaken as angels
hope to harpoon something infinite
when broken, drag it to my meagerness
I take
pride in my work of taking
pride from better beings
to mark my presence
I switch labels on your medicine bottles
to make me valuable
I
calculate with glee the cost of collateral
only one of us came out of the cave a better animal
invaluable smaller creatures feed on and replenish me
666:
configured a new elixir
mixed with wee
doses of amnesia
to make me maybe not the absolute
most saddest axolotl in all of Xibalba
I’ve fixed a wager
wrapped in barbwire
the plucked body at the bottom
From rural Michigan, Nicholas Alti is a bartender in Atlanta. He is interested in horror and surrealism. More of Nicholas’s recent poetry is in or forthcoming in Lotus Eater, TIMBER, Whiskey Tit, Uppagus, and Star*Line.
