*This poem is best viewed in a desktop format.

N + [Seal Team]6

I listen to the headstones each mourning with my usual 

breakhead.

    September 5, 2025

This timbre, a failed top secret missive in North Korea and a 

governless shut-eye deadhouse.

Whitehouse declined to comment

No bodybag can tell the storm straight; a grey boat is a gray boat.

expected an empty beach

afraid they had been spotted

It is no more than tragedy the danger of sunk negotiations

open fired 

killing everyone on board

sunk bodies.

likely civilians 

diving for shellfish

These words an accumulation of useless, repetitive, 

incongruous offerings. 

Mollusca Mori.

I wrote this poem using the style N+7, a technique where nouns are replaced by nouns seven entries down in the dictionary. It is a tool of defamiliarization. My replacements are inconsistent in order to keep with certain themes and images, as well as to draw attention to the inconsistencies of the U.S. government. On September 5, 2025, the New York Times Headlines podcast was titled “A Failed Top Secret Mission in North Korea and a Government Shutdown Deadline” – the words in italics are all quotes from the podcast.

Cover artwork by Caroline Acker.