Noah Siela

I’m listening to something beautiful

called Metamodern Country I got from a guy

who accidentally martyred a mass murderer

by remixing his manifesto. When you’re trying

to make something beautiful from terror,

you must be careful not to pick the ink

that false-notes an attempt at elegy

or deal with a legion of pings

glutting the comment section’s echo-sounder.

The cave begs you to yell the right things into it

and the dentist’s chair of the mind doesn’t oblige,

so you go mum at the entrance, twelve hundred twenty eight bucks

of gifted spelunking gear unclanking at your feet

while the bad intentions of guano-bowed air await your holler

and the heart, construed to a purr, buckles.