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.