the only broadcast transmitting directly from the rocks, unlicensed, ungrounded, and sponsored by an iron crane twisted ninety feet above the tide—which was an accident. Three lighthouse keepers clocked out in nineteen-hundred and never returned, though someone keeps renewing the lease. The tracking knob is stuck between an evangelical telethon and an infomercial for frozen shrimp: heavily salted and salty. Rilke phoned the pledge drive to discuss the angels, or what he thought were angels, until they towed his car. Next up on Public Affairs: an interview with an isopod. His name is Poyo; he, i mean, it curls into a shiny gray sphere whenever someone mentions jury duty, or the federal deficit. Poyo currently occupies the lower beak of a largemouth bass, acting as its tongue, its publicist, and its personal chef. Brenda called in from California to weigh a frozen sparrow: three grams of feathers, four grams of tea, and twelve grams of guilt. She claims every molecule moves at two distinct speeds, both of which are pedestrian, especially in the rain. BREAKING news on the community scroll: the Last Judgment has been postponed. Biagio da Cesena appeared in the lower corner of the monitor wearing a live serpent as a necktie, which looked tasteful. The Vatican sent a tailor with three bolts of polyester to stitch modesty trunks onto the archangels, posthumously. Running now, the footage in reverse at sixteen frames per second to verify whether the damned were falling or merely crowd-surfing. The seraphim are complaining about the ventilation; the studio doesn’t have ventilation, just a rusted desk fan. At 03:14 AM the station identification begins to drift. The theology department calls this Stellvertretung: vicarious suffering by proxy, like letting a woodlouse absorb your traffic court summons, which is completely illegal. The ones under the carpet tiles are doing inventory; they cataloged seven paperclips, a dry battery, and a tooth. Nobody answers the studio switchboard because nobody works here, except the test pattern, which is having a wonderful evening. Tune in tomorrow when we explain the delphinium, or decline; somewhere between 8 or 20 years from now.
standalone poem