Nathaniel K Smith's poem reads like a bike ride that slowly turns into a meditation on death. It begins in a light, mocking mood: the speaker speeds past trees, past goths watching violent videos on stolen wi-fi, past a poet sipping fanta. The commands ("ride," "find," "soar") make the whole thing feel breathless and a little reckless.
Then the tone darkens. Flies get swallowed, mosquitoes get crushed, and the speaker ends up covered in dead insects, wearing them like a second skin. The poem seems to say that life and decay sit side by side, even between highways and warehouses, where a "deathbed" can still bloom. The speaker doesn't flinch from this. Instead, the final lines turn the mess into a kind of ritual, singing "sweet psalms" to a twilight that looks like a corpse. The mood is playful, gross, and strangely tender, as if joy and rot were one thing.