Mr. N + 0

by Kyla Houbolt

Some people, you want

to pick them up like a rat,

in tongs, take them out

and squash them flat.

Usually those people are

some kind of “world leader”

in the news, and yeah,

you don’t know the person,

how he got that way but still

you’re pretty sure the world

would be better off. But also,

you hope somebody else

does the deed of extermination

because you know the cost

of such an act, and your

heart is too full already of

consequence and memory.

So instead you go find

the woods, find a way

to get lost again, in

the sanity of trees and

the way the creatures

live and die. Set your rat

loose out there. Maybe he

survives; maybe he feeds

an owl.

Kyla Houbolt is a poet and gardener living in North Carolina, USA. Both “Mr. N+0” and “Ode to the Odious” will appear in Becoming Altar, New and Selected Poems, forthcoming from Subpress Collective in the fall of 2025. Website , Bluesky, (she/her)

Image credit: Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) Group X, No. 2, Altarpiece (1915) Artvee.com