Alert!

Alert! I have insight from a fruit producer

That maybe the secret

Is to take a normal thing

And slightly permute it

My friend the goblin

Insists on this breathing

Technique made by marines for

Calm sleep when coming

Down with an unrelated

Disease of various Italian

Blotches plotted eastwards

On the abstract plain

Of the smooth back in repose

In other words

It’s called “marsquake”

When these beings like this

Use the flat roofs by

The beach to do sinister

Work in the dead of night not-

Withstanding intention when for

A few days first biding

Time between the “ultimate

Bitterness of the untimely

Soul” and more totalizing,

Concrete longing

But then

Come to find

Out the real creature

Is the archetypal and some

Would say Biblical

Paradigm of innocence and

Not the 70-

Dollar insect finding

Beautifully its rumored

Home in the kitchen somewhere

Between the vague and mostly

Unremarkable mouthfeel of

Mass-produced bread-

Crumb

In the daily paper, yesterday: “The Engineer will soon

Defeat the Architect in true

Worship at the ‘Primal

Altar’ of

Iron!”

—

from Works & Days Vol. 6: Winter 2025

—

Elijah Jackson is a writer based in New York. Recent poetry and criticism have been published in Fence, Flash Art, Second Factory,  Annulet, mercury firs, Keith LLC, and others.