With vivid and unflinching imagery, poet Nicholas Alti places us squarely in the body of suffering and asks us to consider our own path to redemption. It was our great delight to publish his remarkable poem ‘Bl–dstre+m’ in Pulp Literature Issue 25, Winter 2020, which you can order here.
Nicholas has kindly gifted us with another of his haunting pieces, and we are honoured to share it with you. This poem explores the unholy alliance of chronic pain, addiction, depression, and dissociation — and asks how the mind can navigate the wreckage. How does one think about need, hope, love, and health through the ever-present filter of pain? But by asking, there is the promise of an answer. By moving into the unknown, we find, as Nicholas tells us, “the place where the joy in struggle resides.”
when covered in me / when smothered in beasts
Nicholas Alti
x.
I’m covered in beasts / beasts yes all body smothered
in ashes & breaking points / beasts with names like diagnoses
body: a colosseum of carnivores thrashing against spearheads
body: a dictionary of abhorrent onomatopoeias
body: gunshots echoing from deep in the woods & then quiet
I’m covered in beasts that are me / I’m learning to cope
with whatever claws spell within me torn / with the devil
twisting its tongue / my open mouth / I fear I’ll remember
x.
the doctor says something about hydras & beheadings
what unique rosary is this /
prayers uttered only in fissures & clouds sprung from bombings
perhaps in evanescence the heart lingers / or else
in the beautiful shambles of bodily flotsam
heal me like martyrs want death / like a sacrifice & then rest
heal me like lunar plumes / like how much you look upwards
heal me like ghosts of me / like how much I could have been
the doctor says something about unescapable discomfort
about unlimited horizons of bloodred mist
the doctor says good luck there bud & I know he knows
x.
I’m smothered in cathedrals & catacombs & monsters
I’m smothered by labyrinths of nerve networks & magma
suppose I’ve confused health with embrace
as a hand might about a dagger’s handle
when the hero is slain at the beginning of the myth: body
surrounding you thickets of Greenbrier & barbwire: body
the exact area in which the world writhes upon in bleak panic: body
a simple riddle, & you know the answer, & you’re frightened: body
my flesh & brain writhe away from each other
I see even planets keep distance from heaven
I’m covered in calamitous worlds / I’m soaked in beasts & bedraggled /
the very detritus I fear I’ve been / wreckage christened to me as husk
Nicholas Alti is an MFA candidate at The University of Alabama originally from rural Southwest Michigan. He’s been a fiction and poetry reader for Third Coast, an assistant poetry editor at New Issues Press, and he is currently an assistant editor for poetry and fiction at Black Warrior Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIALOGIST, Newfound, Pretty Owl Poetry, Dream Pop, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere.
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