nathaniel duggan – 3 poems

COLD LONELY MOUNTAIN POEM

dual-wielding railguns on an asteroid
firing off an omega beam
I work in a call center
on the coldest mountain
the only call center
within 12,000 galaxies
of anything else
2x auto-boosted backslash
ice beam scatterblast
you are the one person
I will ever possibly reach
with my interdimensional
big bang attacks
hello please 
may I help you 
I am the moon’s 
loneliest telemarketer


TRIBE-INFECTING VIRUS

Bewildering drunk midday nap,
12,000 plasma-based beam attacks.
Mentally reframing people 
who dislike me as 
‘small pockets of opposition’.
Becoming an unkillable
invasive creature 
found only among clams. 
Meanwhile you respawn
as an angel with a job
in a big glass building—
how lucky you are,
how careful with your laundered
scratch tickets!! You’ll learn 
to count loss backwards.
For I am the infinite insect queen
caging stray puppies,
and I am going to throw
one thousand knives
at all of you at once
forever. 


OIL OCEAN ZONE

I am a massive city of metal!!
A petrochemical refinery
sunk beneath a blood sky
and depleted sun. I am 
the Oil Ocean Zone!!!
The platforms here are purple
and yellow. The bottom is heavier 
than the sea. The oil rig shape
of your most forgotten dream
remains sad but mostly 
impossible to know.
It’s like those Alaskan canneries
or a Japanese cryptid.
It’s like the jellyfish washed up
in an empty superstore parking lot
middle of Kansas.
No rivers in sight.
Not a single wave breaking.


NATHANIEL DUGGAN is a former mattress salesman. His first poetry collection Death Egg is available now. He lives in Maine.


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