Nicholas Alti

WORDS LIKE HALLELUJAH

we can talk all day of failure & pain
I have never been strong

sometimes, I am not all dead

let me recommend you words
like hallelujah

words you might treble toward heaven
to raise your own body from the water

I’m trying to show you how to have
nothing left & manage to hide it

the body I live in is still water & arsenic

I believe in things like shallow lakes

I can’t breathe without singing
arrows straight into the ground

to dislodge a tangle of roots
concealing an ossified hymnal

or otherwise a weapon which fires sonatas

or, otherwise, I am a sad little hurting boy
inhabiting hospitals far too often

three tongues in a small mouth with sharp teeth;
swordfish pierced into a whale carcass sinking;
your last few photographs in the bonfire;

the lake at night when you look instead at the stars—
let me rephrase: you can hear me pleading

& mistake it for song

& I find myself shadow, I find myself

creeping down bodies like ivy
to touch the cold dirt & consider my brevity