That which does not kill us will lose its job at the killing factory. Welcome to Night Vale.

Listeners, after an 11 year hiatus, Night Vale Poetry Week has returned. One of our most sacred town traditions was banned after what happened last time. I’m not sure I can say aloud exactly what that was. It involved people entering a place they weren’t supposed to enter. I shouldn’t tell you what place. I don’t want you getting devious ideas. But that forbidden place rhymes with Log Park.

So, this year, Night Vale, let’s just concentrate on getting those poems written. We need hundreds, from each of you. Pretty much nonstop poetry-writing. The librarians need to feed on your trochees and alliterations. They hunger for your slant rhymes and free verse. They don’t particularly care for limericks. If it’s just like one or two, that’s fine, but they prefer not to make a whole meal out of that junk.

Oh look, we’ve already gotten our first poem sent in. This is from Nazr Al-Mujaheed. And it’s called “An ode to Frances, both of you.” Oh this looks like a sonnet. Iambic pentameter. 14 lines. I’m so excited. This reminds me of my Shakespearean acting class back in college when we had to learn monologues from Richard the Third, and Tartuffe, and Sleepless in Seattle. Well, let’s give Nazr’s poem a read:

If autumn trees and southbound birds can take
For them a season's break, then I will make
A solemn try to seize some time for you
And me. We'll live ten thousand years as new
Lovers on satin sheets, our legs awake,
And arms adrift, and mouths agape for sake
Of seeing with our lips (not eyes) the true
Wet-red and ripe snap-green of fruits that do
Live in endless leas - flowing capes of bees
And flowers, trees and showers, one soft breeze
That is all ours (confusing, then, our skin,
Which can't tell where you end or I begin).
There - in that time of dew and dust - I'll be,
After our Decembers, with you again.

Nazr, what a gorgeous love poem, but I didn’t see anything in there about dolls with dead eyes, or pale girls with black hair covering their faces, or even snakes with human skin. I feel like if you’re going for the full Shakespearean sonnet, you have to include at least one of those things.

Night Vale, I’m looking forward to reading more of your work. Keep writing.

###

Now, let’s have a look at horoscopes.

Be careful with curiosity, Aries. Open no doors.
Lest you find a shadow that is not yours

The stars tell you, Taurus, and I quote:
“We hope you like spiders in your throat”

People are mean, Gemini, but don’t get annoyed
Block out the haters and stare into the void.

Oh, Cancer, we can’t tell you exactly what’s in store
But it involves a chase and a scream and a light touch of gore

Don’t look in the attic Leo. The stars say you ought not.
Unless you want to see the beast that will get you got.

The entry for Virgo contains neither letters nor words
Only strange sketches of eviscerated birds.

They say Libras always keep a level head
But that “Bridge Out” sign, you’ve surely misread.

Bad luck, Scorpio, it was in the news, across the nation
That you finally learned the meaning of defenestration.

Look away, Sagittarius, you do not want to know
That behind you is a clown with a knife and a banjo.

Capricorn, the aliens invaded. I’ll keep it short and sweet
They want to know… are you light, or dark meat?

Aquarius: Looking good, bud. Keep up the good work.

Woe be unto thee, Pisces! Kneel and repent
Else put on these shoes that are made of cement.

This has been horoscopes.

###

Back to Poetry Week. I’ve gotten a good number of poems, but um, not a number of good poems so far. Oh this one seems pretty solid. Harrison Kip writes in with “The Old Hollow Log”

I don’t know all the trees
I know they are majestic
And proud
Stoic and beautiful
Every tree was forged by the gods
Not all the gods
But the ones who like trees

Yet this old hollow log
remembers only its shape
while forgetting its nature
Which is to live
And then to die
And then to return to the earth

Still the old hollow log remains
Shunning erosion
Denying the soil its nutrition
But carrying on as a landmark
In an otherwise
lifeless
desert

And here upon this old hollow log
As you struggle against the restraints
Your screams are unheard
‘neath the holy chanting of our masses

Just know that our God –
Not one you’ve heard of before
A pretty new god, as a matter of fact,
Who is indifferent to trees
But quite enamored with sacrifice –
Will welcome your spirit
With a cold incurious embrace
like an ATM welcomes a bank card
And the finality of you will fill the chasm
of the old hollow log

Thanks, Harrison? I don’t know if this is directed toward a specific person or? You know what? Art is art. If it had a deeper meaning, we would have called it, like, Thinkies, or Thoughtnesses, or Mindfertilzer. It’s called art because that’s all it is. No need to explore deeper.

###

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###

Listeners I’m getting an alarming amount of emails from you about a woman in a light blue suit going around eating people.

And while, yes, fair, that is somewhat newsworthy, this is also Poetry Week. So maybe put your energy into the task at hand. Poems are more important than a woman picking up some yokel standing next to you at the DMV and unhinging her jaw like a red-tailed boa and sliding that squirming citizen into her slimy gullet as her neck throbs with her still-living dinner. And yes, I know how she gets this blank stare as she’s digesting and how she looks all warped like a melted plastic soda bottle. It’s creepy blah blah blah. Sure. Yes. Totally. But, like I said before, that woman is our town founder: Tabitha Littlefield.

She rose from a chrysalis a few months ago, and it’s such an honor to have her around again. She’s only feeding on us because she’s hungry. She’s been dead for nearly 300 years. Cut her some slack.

Actually, you know what would be nice? If you wrote some poems about her. I think she’d really like that. Poetry Week is an ancient tradition that goes back to Tabitha’s days when the first town council met. They would pile soft meat high atop their heads and then recite original poems. These poems were improvised and really mean. Kind of like rap battles but with slightly different hats.

###

Speaking of poems, I just received this poem from the Department of Commerce. It’s called “PRESS RELEASE”

“Urgent Notice. The city of Night Vale is out of food and supplies, because there apparently is no way in or out of Night Vale, at least not predictably so. Sometimes people come here. Other times people leave here. But that’s usually an accident. We’re not scientists.

“But we are the Department of Commerce for the city of Night Vale, and we strongly believe that commerce needs goods to actually, you know, work. So if anyone has any ideas on how to get imports or exports, that’d be great. In the meantime, let’s all be cool at the Ralphs, okay?

“Love, Melanie and Rich”

Well, that’s not a very traditional poem. I liked the part at the end where we learn the narrators’ first names. That was a twist. Also they mention scientists, which is highly erotic. But the whole piece is lacking structure. I couldn’t find the rhythm in my performance, and I don’t think there’s a single rhyme in it.

Maybe it’s about the internal rhymes. A lot of modern poets love to hide their rhymes. Let’s see… “way” rhymes with “okay.” Yeah. I like it now that I’ve given it some space. It’s doing something unique, really subverting our expectations about poetry and capitalism. Good job, Department of Commerce.

###

Listeners, many of you have been hand delivering your poems up to the station, because you want them read on the air before they’re fed to the librarians. That’s great. I love that. But I’m getting word that our town founder Tabitha Littlefield has been not only eating people but also their poems.

While I want the best for our town founder – seems like a lovely woman, what with that blue suit and glimmering chrysalis ooze still covering her whole self, we certainly need far more poems than have been delivered.

Let’s do this. Hang on to your original poems. Keep writing. And if you want to send some to me to read on the air, you can just email them. I’m cecil Gershwin-Pamler at gmail dot com. Not Palmer. Pamler. I intentionally misspelled my own email address so that random people wouldn’t send me dirty photos or ransom notes or family recipes or pictures of kittens, or whatever deranged things sickos like to email.

But y’all are my trusted listeners. You won’t send me anything terrible like recipes or cat photos. You’ll only send me poems for poetry week. And remember: Poetry week is only this week. After that, no more writing poems! It’s not technically illegal, but it is unethical.

###

Oh look we’ve already got our first emailed poem. This one is from my niece Janice, co-written by my sister Abby. It’s called “There’s No Water in the Pool”

We used to go swimming
Three seasons out of the year
The pool is still there
To remind us of warmth
Of floating
Of life before it ever began
Of better times
Of family times

The pool is empty, yet
It is still a pool to us
We trust the concrete
Will never leave us
But without the water
It’s only a shell of itself.

Gosh, that’s such a haunting poem, you two. I’m very moved, and I hope you get the pool filled up soon!

Oh, I see Abby included a little note about the meaning of the poem. She says: “Cecil, I don’t know how to talk to Steve about his new job. He seems happy, but it’s hard to tell. He’s so busy. I feel like he’s not really himself these days. Something about that new company, that Labyrinth, has taken away all that made him a great husband and father. And now there’s just a Steve-shaped man in our house.”

Abby goes on: “Anyway, writing the poem was truly cathartic. Feel free to read it on the air, but please don’t read anything else from this email. I want to talk to Steve myself.”

[nervously clears throat]

Um. Thanks for writing in, Abby and Janice! And good luck with the pool.

###

Listeners, best to just stay inside right now, I’m getting reports that our town founder is out of control. This used to be a simple case of a woman in a business suit covered in primordial goo strolling about the city randomly eating people. But now, this is a rampage. She’s still strolling about eating people. What with so many of you in the streets writing and reading poems, she can’t seem to stop herself.

In fact, I’ve been told that she’s growing. When she emerged from the Chrysalis a few months back, people said she was maybe a little under 5-and-a-half feet tall, but after all the feasting, she’s got to be five-four? Five-five, by now?

So head inside, Night Vale. I know you’d love to be outside, enjoying the crisp spring sunshine. But you’re safer if you just hear about the weather.

###

WEATHER

###

Night Vale’s founder walked across town, zigzagging down every major road, devouring maybe one out of every 50 or so people. I’ve heard reports that she’s eaten more than 2,000 poems today alone. And that’s a big blow. We’re going to all have to work harder, not smarter, the rest of the week to meet the librarians’ quota.

When she arrived at the center of town, the Dog Park’s tall gates opened for her. (Oh geez, just like 11 years ago. Why can’t we handle Poetry Weeks around here?) She headed straight toward the obelisk at the center of the park. She licked the poem by former Night Vale mayor Danielle DuBois that is engraved on the pedestal.

Tabitha then wrapped both her arms around the tower. More arms emerged from her smart-looking blue blazer. Then more arms. All in all something like 17 arms came out of that woman, and she skittered to the top.

At this point a long, forked tongue came out of her mouth and she began hissing.

A crowd gathered awaiting a dramatic event. Would our town founder transform into a giant wingéd beast? Would the earth begin to quake? Would the air around us all become flames? Would the sky turn blood red and the clouds spin like lions circling their prey? Would Poetry Week get cancelled again?

Nope. The gates just stayed open, and Tabitha’s still up there looking every bit like a woman in a blue business suit, who just so happens to have a forked tongue and a surplus of arms. It was anticlimactic, so the crowd began to disperse.

“Eh, I’ve seen weirder,” said James Botros (pronounced Boat-rows), owner of the Witch and Warlock Emporium off Route 800, in that building that was clearly once a Bed Bath and Beyond. “This one time, my friend Rakim, he was drinking a glass of milk,” Botros continued, “And I said something really funny – like once-a-generation level joke here – and Rakim laughed so hard that milk came out his nose, and he died.”

Everyone standing near James Botros immediately went quiet and stared at him.

He continued: “I should clarify there was an 80 year difference between when the milk came out of Rakim’s nose and when he died. Rakim died peacefully at age 99, surrounded by 4 children and 13 grandchildren, and even a few of the great-grandchildren. But the weird part,” Botros said, “is that Rakim was a tortoise. Male tortoises don’t stay with their young. How did he know who those kids were?”

“Flippin’ bonkers, I tell you,” Botros concluded. He then waved a crooked stick in the air. A murmuration of starlings swirled about him, and he disappeared

We’ve come a long way as a town, Night Vale. Eleven years ago, it was taboo to even look toward the Dog Park, let alone directly inside it, but nowadays, it’s less of a big deal. I’m proud of how we’ve grown. But also, I’m out of paper towels and cereal, and I’m not really sure the Ralphs is ever going to restock. So I guess if it’s not one bother, it’s another.

Well, Night Vale. who knows how long we’re safe from the town founder or what she wants, but at least she’s stationary. For now.

Stay tuned next for the many poems you will write.
And as always: Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

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PROVERB: You have two wolves inside of you: Dave and Jill. They're both film buffs. Jill loves sports. And Dave has to travel a lot because of work.