The general premise of Poetic Alchemy is that money can be literally converted into poetry. In 2001, Merhi found that each one-dollar bill has in addition to its serial number a letter that identifies the Federal Reserve Bank where each bill was printed. Because there are 12 Federal Reserve Banks, the serialization starts with the letter A and ends with the letter L. By taking advantage of this fact, the artist obtained all the possible words that can be combined from A to L using an anagram software coded by himslef. Once he had the list of potential words, Merhi "constructed" a poem and also a established a method to create poetry, creating what he called a “Poetic Alchemy.”

Poetic Alchemy - Detail (FAKE BALD EAGLE BLEED LIKE A DEAF FLEA)

In 2006, Poetic Alchemy was featured in the movie Elipsis, directed by Eduardo Arias-Nath, played by Edgar Ramírez, and distributed by 20th Century Fox.

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