Tom Morello’s Hat


It is a thunder first 

That spikes the pane

Against the glazing 

Points and rattles 

The whole century 

Of cedar in this 

Rattling place and 

From the driveway 

Above the golden fishnets

Of September birch

Wings roar over 

US NAVY

Gold on blue 


The cabdriver said 

Cuidado, bombas molotovas

And we had no idea

The twin towers mattered

So much in Santiago 

September 11, 2004

Out by the Hooters 

The light on the hills 

Was Balboa in the 80s

Block by block 

August Santiago remained 

We left immediately for Valpo


May 3, 1997 on the field

In the thresher 

Doing the Hessian stomp

Full to the eyes with rage 

Murray Murray Murray 

Bury bury bury

America in 1997 was the tip

Of a lit cigarette near your thigh

And all of the bones showing 

They came out squirting gasoline

And my teen limbs shook


Mornings in the nineties 

Every other week 

I walked down from my dad’s 

Icy in the desert dawn

And look at it will you just look

At it the dawn there blazing 

On the Oquirrh Mountains 1994

Those ruddy belts overlaid 

Where Kennecott slowly

Slowly disemboweled the mountain 


The story goes that the octopus 

Birthed in Butte 

Came south to eat the Mormons

And they let them and let them

Build Rose Park and a smelter

Until one night a visitor

And in the morning 

The octopus was gone 

To Santiago 


Out in these mountains 

The bones and the silver 

Finish the snow’s light 

Where the afternoons 

Swagger out into the basins

Go go go with the antelopes

Out to the farthest edge 

And then keep going


With a golden Kalashnikov

In the dust from the plaster   

Obliterated by US planes 

Those glasses he wore 

Just like my glasses 

His blood in that plaster 

My country shattered 


The song the prisoners 

Heard you play with 

Your smashed hands 

Your tongue on the floor 

In the hour before 

An end nobody should know


Always the moss 

And management and the rain

Always the darkening days 

With the time bleeding down

But need is the edge 


It is whettening 

Slivered against the leaded air

We people 

On the knife’s edge 


In this honing 

All of the world 

Lies in a peel 


What in the world 

Remains 


The world 

Copyright © 2025 Otis Nebula Press. All rights reserved.

Andrew Haley’s Good Eurydice was published by Otis Nebula in 2011. His poems, stories, essays, and translations have appeared in many places, including > kill author, Color Pastel Poesía, Stop Smiling, and Fanzine. He co-translated (with Ivana Gamarnik) Lola Arias’ play Mi Vida Después.