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 MuseumI 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.