poems by nicholas alti

Neighborhood Pig

From bacillus to basilisk, even me a hunter. I followed the wandering calico
into the vegetable garden; these jalapenos grow

from the decay of my golden retrievers
buried under strawberry moon.
Peering over the fence, into the cabal of neighborhood, there’s a new grieving

& I know who you are, woman, nightgown weaving around your wrinkles—
that paper-mâché mask of a feral pig you wear under night’s greenish hue
doesn’t hide your misery well,

but I give you this: you look alive tonight & I’m watching you weep
under our neighbor’s young hickory tree.
I could never stop you; nobody wants you to hurt.

I’ve lost the trail of the nightingale; a nearby bullfrog, hidden beneath
that chrysanthemum, perhaps, is choking on a shotgun shell.

Isn’t it too cold to crouch barefoot in the detritus,
in the swamp this season has turned our front yards into? Where are your shoes?
Where is your father? How could he have beckoned you to Arkansas,
fed you French fries & scallops, decorated the top of his skull
with an exit wound
while you slept once more in your childhood bed?

You’ve condoned yourself a sorrow, & there’s nothing
the neighborhood animals can tell you
but to tell you it’s alright, you doing this.

The plumes of my breath confuse the composition of night; in my myopia
you look more human than I can be comfortable with.

Swallow the Goldfish

There are too many photographs of horizons, grayscale or color made meaningless.
If all watercolor landscapes merged into a single Mandela it might explain
why wolves have started howling in the morning, seemingly from far out at sea &

whenever a new animal is discovered there’s a gunman already hunting.
What kind of message does this send to the insects, to the river? I am somehow alive
& I’ve torn out my tongue to sing as bodies of water sing:

I, sleepeater/dopesmoker, have swallowed the goldfish—tonight I worship
the goldfinch, never the warship.

On grandma’s veranda I overlook the horrible ennui of aging, because in her garden
not a foot from a stone St. Peter
(a jagged crack slitting its throat
as if murder by box cutter)
is a black bear, just a cub, just itself being an entire world of beauty, of viciousness & innocence
& then I break apart entirely for why must this also be a statue?

If I really am reincarnate Sagittarius—& I believe that I am
plucked from the sky—then my commandments are
For each wondrous pulse of the celestial infinite
there is an equal treasure of human heart, by which I mean
I have chronic nightmares of my friends fucking me
or more accurately
wait
& often aloud on accident I say there’s no point to this,
which, when you come down to it,
what I truly mean to say is that’s not what I meant

& if everything is recorded
nothing will ever happen.
Even these backyard cardinals waiting for creeping cat will die blithely;
the limestone birdbath is full of minnows & mother toad
is half plastered on the fence, half tangled in weedwacker lashes.

I fear the river, for I believe it can leave the water
& I fear the heart, for it can drown itself in the blood it pumps.

(West Trade Review, Volume 9)