Herman Melville in Hell

He’d been there before as
a port of call, all the natives
dressed in missionary suits,
descendants of cannibals
who made their way North in
long boats with oars carved
from whale bones or so dream
fathers said around the pot
belly stoves smoking their long
stem pipes stuffed with aromatic
blends of hemp, dried tobaccos
soaked in cactus juices and left
out in the sun to bake the resins
right into their brains insuring
that the stories they told were
as vivid as the sunsets over
tall ships, their empty riggings
manned by spirits of drowned
sailors lost at sea.

Alan Catlin has several new books out in the past year including, Exterminating Angels, a full-length book by Kelsay Books channeling Noir and art movies. His How Will the Heart Endure, a labor of love about the life and art of Diane Arbus, was just released by Kelsay Books. His long-lost book Altered States, a cross country trip of a United States of the mind, will be out in 2023 from Cyberwit.