Because by Heath Brougher

A mouth opens and emits mantras 

among a row of wallflowers 

in awkward bloom

while everyone in the world

goes into solitary confinement 

so they won’t die of cough consumption 

while stuck in a crowd.

Not hearing the hurricanes and floods

Gaia decided to roar loud enough 

the entire globe was startled by the volume

of its serious shriek 

as it began writing evil odes 

to the nose and throat

that were smaller

than a cotton seed yet still

threw a wrench into the spokes 

of the over-personification run amuck,

spawning masked mouths and Sanitizer Sundays.

No longer did people gather 

in groups on the fields 

of plush pollen and ribs of Water Trees

but instead were left with no armor 

to guard against the aerial venom 

sprawling through the days 

of empty museums 

and living room lifestyles 

where dogwood trees 

tried to sprout from the skin 

and all the medicine cabinets died, 

along with a lot people, 

as this crisis could’ve been averted 

if not for a mutated orangutan,

a man with tiny hands 

clutching immense amounts of power,

stark and evil, became the Fascist figurine  

of society’s sincerest lunacy. 

Heath Brougher is the Editor-in-Chief of Concrete Mist Press and co-poetry editor of Into the Void, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Magazine. He received Taj Mahal Review’s 2018 Poet of the Year Award and is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. He was also awarded the 2020 Wakefield Prize for Poetry. He has published 11 books and, after spending over three years editing the work of others, is ready to get back into the creative driver seat for a bit. He has four books forthcoming in 2022 and 2023. His first book of nonfiction “The Braincyst Journals” is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press.