FIVE POEMS by NOAH DAVID ROBERTS

First Immersion Deity

Every experience I’ve ever had was synthetic

immersondeityclusteredthought

dance hellishere

my

    thoughts

are in

          clusters

like jauntedstilts onmyboots

tropingthrough the city

which in its absence   leavesmeblind

     to something I’d forgot

-ten less seconds of my life now exist

not in temporal entitiesbut

rather a feral dog      which leaps

from its backlegs into the arms

of its savior

            I am that dog

which lies within the mud

& rollsaround scratching its ass or

in otherwords my heaven is

a sparrow’s cradle      tipping eggs with

thewind as fabric ruffles init

& my lovingnatureis

leftbehind     my skull isleftbehind

crustedaround the headofaspear.


Digging

Lack is the standard definition of a hole. A great big hole in the street. Pothole, sinkhole, fault lines. Bellybuttons & ear piercings, tiny holes left by needles. Black spot, history of hole symbolism. Black hole I can never photograph. Holes where my eyes should be. Dead & empty holes! Wet slop holes of mud in my backyard, I remember falling when I was younger. Dirty holes! Hole in the wall hole in the ground. Body holes, plot holes, bullet holes, crochet. Tryptophobia, foam bubbles look like holes when they are fine enough. My heart a place I’d love to have a hole. Oh how I witness even with two empty eye-holes, oh how I hear with my ear-holes. Holes in my face allow breath & consumption. Blood comes from more holes than it doesn’t. Put your holes into me, together we are a big dark stinking hole, together we devour; although sometimes I wonder if I can tell you who is devourer/devoured. A long trench is just an elongated hole. Rifles have holes. Targets have holes. Aim for the hole, you know what I mean (golf). Like when I accidentally let loose an arrow & left a hole in your tire. My whole life is a hole. Hole to fall down into. Grave-hole, death-hole. Shovels are not how to dig this hole. You must denigrate & depreciate to enjoy your fullest hole-ness. I leave holes everywhere I go, daily affirmation. I am one of many holes left behind. Beyond the hole is only more hole. Look within the hole to find the hole, etc. Boy do I love holes. Anything could be down in that hole. Hope for treasure in the hole, not fire. I peer into the hole & see no bones. See, the hole never had a body anyway. The hole never thought I am a hole—I don’t think. Maybe it did. Maybe the hole knows its a hole, & is doing what I am doing, refracted, upside-down, mirrored video, fractured, building, damaging, appreciating, filling. One time I did too much ketamine & had to walk home K-holing in New York night. The hole thinks, wow, you are stupid. Degrading hole which has no master. The hole as hive-mind, as mutating spreading virus. Hole changing with time. I could talk all day about holes. Debt is a hole. Fate is a hole. Morality is a hole. My love is a hole. New York is a hole. A hole in a log grows moss, in my memory, more often than not. for the hole everything is good, so I must try to be more like the hole. Everything has its own hole. Enter me—a holy thing, as it pulls you deeper upon itself.


Our Lady of the Wasps

after feeding the birds at the Rodin Museum

I stand

broken at

the knees

humming with

electricity

in veins made

of clay step

out of the nest

& into change trans

-form from hovering wasp

to silent new thing in

the morning I feed

the birds your

carcass because once

I was attacked. I did

not know what was

under my foot,

& now I am crowned

with hornet stings

& a stunning

invited

mutation.


Vision of the Swarm

I fall like something is tied

to my legs. Less & less

I see what you see,

battered, jawbroken, heart

-strung like a harp & plucked

femoral arteries the small

birthmark on your thigh left

by a searing pair of kisses.

This cloudiness is home.

I stand, a nude atop a feral mountain,

vision echoing, surrounded

by wasps. Stop-motion

animation. You, being of the only sort

to touch a hand to my neck &

knot out the cancerous lumps

lording above. Witness

herein the city of cinder,

alight with the miniscule.

Overanalyze the actions of

your own affections; it all

comes back. Dip the rat in oil.

Lash your flesh to the pines,

dilapidate & tragedize

your own silent mode of silence.

Listen—hear the hum of the swarm

of cars outside your nest,

carry yourself to the queen,

embody all that is your own.

Transmutation is a terrible process;

sometimes, a mind is a murder,

an excavation. I remember

your bright face as I ran

from a thousand predators.


On Opening the Window

Interimreticulationblastingthroughmydoor

                                                               problematically coloring myendingcurtains

                                                 &blowingthrough w i n d o w s

                                                              d i d you know that sinking that creeps

        around your boots? Distortioninertia,

calmingpool, dangerousmandible interoception,

        a puddle of h o l e s, hinges, bentnails & traumaporn,

                a likening, a lighting, lightning, lying d o w n

                        inthemuck, o the brashness of valorism,

            violence, vigilance, vestibulelike thought,

in the r o o m there is a corpse etc., much like

                    when I recognized your shade,

                                                                                        psychicvision

               perceptive through metasticizingpunt,

        & I wonder do you know immersiondeity?

My lather is a sink full of saltwater

like w e a t h e r orelse did you know my sorryness

is a quaint thing, onthewind

                                                 which blows

                                                              & brews

                                                        anx

                                                                iety?


Noah David Roberts (they/them) is a non-binary poet based in Philadelphia, PA. Roberts is the author of 6 collections: Us v. Them, Strips, Slime Thing [and other poems], Final Girl Mythos, What I Do in the Dark, and Mutable Forests. Since publication of their first book, Roberts has been published in Bullshit Lit, Tribes Magazine, Horror Sleaze Trash, and more. In 2022, Roberts won the Judith Stark poetry contest. Roberts is a reader at Graphic Violence Lit, and loves cats. Their Instagram handle is @the.apocalypse.poet.

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