Monstrosity

By Nathan Spoon

My body is powered by internal combustion.
It is a fruity cluster of lust near the office cactus,
especially in that unspectacular moment
it becomes clear, like a snail learning to ignore
instances of sudden pointless touch, how much
not giving a shit takes the wind out of
cruel sails.
                           Scene: this is our moment.
                           It is a moment
                           of giantism so casual nobody has noticed. Somebody must be eager to put a bullet into our moment.
                           This is a perfect moment
                           to be alone watching a gnat crawling in circles this moment.
                           This moment
                           is nearly as wonderful as the Bavarian gentians of another’s moment.
                           This is not a blue moment.
                           It is, on the contrary, a bottomless moment.
                           At some point murder is going to become the phenomena swallowing the dislocated whales singing through this moment.
                           I feel disembodied when I blink. I feel exactly the way I do when pulling a shirt over my head and waiting for the spectacular moment
                           when my head pops through the neck hole, or when I close my eyes while washing my face or rinsing shampoo suds from what counts as my hair. It feels like something terrible is going to happen, until (and note: sleep, when it falls on me from within, is entirely alright), until I can confirm with my eyes again, with a look approximating the sound of air being squeezed from a puffy pocket on the back of a pet toad.
                 File this:
                                     under everybody has entered the atmosphere of aftermath
                                     under the infected toy rendered the villain speechless
                                     under smoke threading the light of goodness unbinding us
                                     under an ordinary grub infused with mystery 
                                     under scales of mercy, scales of mercy, scales of
                                     under mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy
                                     under the reflected limbs of

About the author:

Nathan Spoon is an autistic poet with low academic fluency whose poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Mantis, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Scores, Oxford Poetry, South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. His debut collection, Doomsday Bunker, was published in 2017. He is editor of Queerly.