from [hail]

[04]

The turmoil you’ve described so beautifully.
As in a table.
But your white leather satchel has been emptied.
Of contents.
This is unusual navigation. It works like this:
Despite its salutary effects.
There was a problem with the buffering.
Really just a diary.
A non-chromium oxidizing agent.
In other words, sanctity is gradated.
In adjacent lines or clauses.
Of my inflamed throat, which is itself.
Or less. Or more.
This is unusual turmoil. It works.
It’s buffering.
Like this: we shall live above neighbors.
And never pay.
Our diaries are plagued by tables of contents.
For heat again, which rises.
There was a cell found in your satchel.
We’ve already fracked a confession.
New user, there was a problem loading your avatar.

[22]

New user, we’re good now.
The right channel predominates.
We’re going to have a word with them.
From time to time.
About their making so much sense.
I think I’m going to begin.
When they metasignify.
To distance myself.
For the purposes of song.
From the derangement of my senses.
But is there a third.
My early influences included everything.
Can we talk about your time in prison.
I couldn’t see but heard.
Studies show that human ears can detect.
Through walls.
Rhymes of syntax and logic at least four.
Is it okay if I call it “your time in prison.”
Time zones away.
I think I’m just going to triplespeak.
How does one even begin to revise.
My afternoons from now on.
Specifically, the way it reinscribes memory.
We have safeguards in place.
It doesn’t even matter the order in which.
To account for the fact that I am not a performance artist.
Spiders hatch in the computer tower.
Can you teach me how to be a performance artist.
I need you to dampen my vision.
Is it okay if I call you “Your Time In Prison.”

[25]

You must come to the film as though a baby.
Even though we’ve been salooned.
But a cop or ruffian followed you there.
With great pomp and pipe smoke.
And we can hear “Mack the Knife.”
As of something futurist.
Sounding from the toddler’s iPad.
Which tilts fascistically.
You’re just going to have to drink more of it.
I promise there will be at least one.
Lurid staircase upon.
Luminary with slapback applied to their ideology.
Which all angles of approach are possible.
Like two blue lines beneath our clauses.
My face is already numb in the face.
Implying that something may be wrong.
Of newscast and calamity.
With our grammar or clarity.
New user, a new update is available.
Please note that I never implied or promised.
In which we allow for figurative language.
That metastasis would proceed in a coherent manner.
And when I heard him sing the song at the party.
I did not know that one day I would have to choose.
Everyone stood and wept in their shoes.
Between today and feelgood.
Take your goddamned hat off.
I think your sheep just leaked into my poem.
When I’m talking to you.
Even though we’ve been marooned.
Sometimes days are born from incoherence.
Then tilt fascistically.
It's a sign of disrespect.
But begin to make more sense.
I like to count sheep over the fence.

[37]

Let’s go into “the city.”
A shadow passing over the receiver.
And get dolled up to go nowhere.
I like to watch you move.
Corporations pay me to incorporate.
Toward the rotary telephone (we painted it “Windsor Cream”).
Ten, plus or minus, references to the keyword.
Because my mind feels cleaner.
Into immaculate copy.
If you begin to hear smoke.
The text gets smaller and smaller.
You know you’ve gone too far.
As the footnotes beget more footnotes.
When smoke becomes audible.
How many times do I have to tell you.
And in the good years we nurtured a correspondence.
That my psychosis was politically motivated.
Our mothers would call “unreadable.”
Everyone knows what we mean.
By which they meant that we do not wish.
When we say, “the city.”
To be understood.
As if it were the present—green rooms and seizures.
By logging into your system.
I think I’m going to live a little.
In order to foresee all possible valences.
Less long, or at least less concerned with endurance.
By smoking one cigarette a week.
Come here, contrarian.
The new intelligences promised to us.
There is a red or blue or green daub.
Are secure, hallucination-free.
In your eye. You need to know: after you called me strange.
And it’s okay if it can’t be recreated.
I disappeared for thirteen years.
Especially as it impacts the United States.
And got dolled up to go nowhere.
Seeking to damage the people and infrastructure.
I read Rimbaud to the open window.
I would have had to have had.
And the Library Tower harmonized phallically.
A few more years in institutions.
Overwhelmed me.
And in the bad years we spoke of the past.

∩

Alex Tretbar is the author of the chapbook Kansas City Gothic (Broken Sleep, 2025). As a Writers for Readers Fellow with the Kansas City Public Library, he teaches free writing classes to the community. His poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in APARTMENT, The Cincinnati Review, Iterant, Kenyon Review, Narrative, Protean, The Rumpus, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere.