Janine Certo is author of Elixir, winner of both the 2020 New American Poetry Prize and the 2020 Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize (forthcoming 2021, co- published by New American Press and Bordighera Press) and In the Corner of the Living (Main Street Rag). Poems are forthcoming in The Rumpus and Radar Poetry.
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Janine Certo
Conspiracy Theory
a circle of reason / a proof that cannot
be proved or disproved / a mad mixture /
a template for order / cast, shaped, ready-
made and launched / requires immediate
response (response must have no minor
errors) / a distrust, a witch hunt,
an elaborate dance / behind the scenes /
eyewitness testimony / no discussion
of the shortcomings /a lying
song; a hunch gone wrong / the plunge
of an economy; the rise of a demagogue /
lurking, scheming, webbing / it spreads
like famine / birthed from drought /
it’s birther and denier / the death of science /
a plot / a hoax / a code / a cover-up /
it spawns movements / knee-jerk / whatever
works / the uncited / the alt-right /
a need served / epistemic,
existential, self-defeating / off the cliff,
a riff, an election rigged / the rewritten,
the staged, the misplaced / towers that never fell /
a genocide erased / the Evil Incarnate /
the Machiavellian-slick / the mouse’s click /
a spiral into alienation and anomie /
a sense-making in a world otherwise
confusing / otherwise good people.
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