[228 words]
These cases end in bursts like transitions in rhythm
Frog notices fox in a burst all croaking stops
These cases emit infrared heat make haunting places
These cases tend to turn sour our scent before rigor
Stiff as a casket to turn over spread what spills out
& sift through soil for a horn or extra organs, for proof you were something so human
These accidents happen at crossroads past bedtime
When fault is a skin to slip inside wrong in warm ways
This is accident if chrysalis cracks bull shark in shallows
These aren’t accidents in any eye in any skull on any stake
Where clover is below an invasive thing so soft on bare skin
how your wolf-pack of catalysts runs rabid but honest like a confession before impact
This isn’t a curse of proportions or dimensions with context
Fungi in fennel taste the body of the body god feeds on
This curse is a knot of thorns around the hand that grips the throat
This curse is not nightshade or full stomach of changelings
& sequence fractals into glyph into single frame, outside this landscape’s focal point
This is cosmic now in terms of all quasars forming ashes
Our intrinsic humors in shambles all spoiled into riddles
These close calls came from inside a sad enticement
This closed case I’ll keep cold a beating heart on ice
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, 7th-Circle Pyrite, Star*Line, BlazeVOX, and elsewhere. Find all his published work at 3bluntzatonce.com.
