2 Poems by Alistair McCartney - Altadena Poetry Review

Germ Theory of Poetry by Mark E. Smith

I’m the father of poetic procedures

Here to warn you against all decaying poetic matter

Here to protect you from all poetic miasmas

Dunno bout you

But amidst a pandemic

I’m even more absent minded

Even more oddly excited

Beware of all shopping expeditions!

Beware of entering Sainsbury’s and Tesco!

Will a mask protect me against poetry?

Children, your assignment today is to write a poem

That makes me so miserably happy

Life seems joyfully worthless

I’m the father of poetic procedures

I’ve been described as the savior of poets

My one sole desire ’tis to excite poetic fever

All hail Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis etc.

Now ere’s something for ya:

Semmelweis means “bread roll” or “bun-white”.

The name Semmelweis is not spelled with ss as in weiss

But uses the shorter suffix –weis

(We omit the second s)

Welcome to the new Western word order

At the local me and the lads

Wash our tongues

In this thoroughly delightful chlorinated lime solution

It results in a pleasantly tingly sensation

A pandemic, how very provincial!

Don’t come anywhere near me

And on Downing Street blonde Boris ruminates:

I hope I never have to shake

Another hand again

N95 Reused Respirator Song by Kurt Cobain

Verse

All my short long life I’ve worn an isolation gown

He knitted a virus for me

Into a crown

Bridge

I hear it originates in bats

Chorus

Hand sanitizer

Don’t be a miser

Gimme gimme gimme

Some of your sweet sad hand sanitizer

Alistair McCartney is the author of two genre-blurring novels The Disintegrations (2017) and The End of the World Book (2008), both published with University of Wisconsin Press. The Disintegrations is the winner of The Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. TEOTWB was a finalist for the PEN USA Fiction Award and the Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White debut fiction award. His poetry and cross-genre writing has appeared in journals such as Hotel Literary Magazine, 3:AM, Fence, Vestiges, Nat.Brut, Animal Shelter (Semiotexte), The James White Review, 1913, Dream Pop, Five 2 One, XRAY Literary Magazine, Gertrude, and Bloom. He is currently working on a novel and a book of poems and hybrid texts. Originally from Australia, he lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches in Antioch University’s MFA program, and directs their undergraduate creative writing concentration.