Paul B. Roth (4 poems)
FOUND OUT
Between us are no names. Signs ingrained by repetitive gestures are all that’s necessary. Deep in bird song is the forest where we stand. Gurgling over split rock across which we step, a flat stream wets our pant cuffs. One of us insists on taking another path, the other urges going ahead, making this body, a shared one, spin in place. Making this body a past, played out where gymnasium children stood on each other’s’ shoulders and crawled from basement windows in a desperate attempt at regaining their parents. A past when having escaped, they find their parents gone, their brothers
and sisters missing. Where once a warm bread was shared at dusk among roses whose aroma was colored the hue of a Danube sunset, the same dining room’s once butterfly embroidered wallpaper
has now been stripped in uneven lengths alongside the steaming peeled skins of boiled cow tongues. The future we dreamed was a reality, now drags our hearts’ pace down to the vertical spray of light that dusty champagne bottles pop in French wine cellars. We toast the sky that floats atop our bubbling goblets and in one gulp swallow it down. Having no longer any kind of sun in its midst, it may be our final hope for survival.
GOING NOWHERE
No one comes back. Still, we wait without being convinced. So many we’ve known,
so many unknown over centuries who met horrible ends. Eyes gouged out, ears sliced off, noses butterflied, teeth filed flat, lips sewn shut, arms and legs severed at the elbow and knee, torsos hacked while still squirming, even castrations producing eunuchs who alone could be trusted to protect
Sumerian harems or the Chinese Emperor’s wives. Not to mention all those others whose chests were hollowed out, and whose children were allowed to feel around an expanse of sea water and honey for fragments of their mothers and fathers. Until one night, a particular heart was scooped out before
holding its beat for some time hung just over a fire pit’s rising flames. Grilled as a special meal the
king had requested his adulterous queen be served with her choice of wine that very night, it was to
be prepared so as not to arouse his lady’s suspicions in the least. After all, was he not entitled to
emulate the same gratified pose his queen has recently shown over her most recent repast?
DIN
Choirs a golden chrysalis cracks open, heard only by a marching column of black ants
across a discarded soda straw, drift off towards the very end of their muffled hymnal. Earth’s aroma
is all that’s left of their song. I could taste this remnant were it not for my mouth wasting so much
time speaking and not enough time salivating. More time translating identity into words lassoing rain
clouds in the desert. And yet, were it not for these words, would there be any need for greeting this anonymous page everyday with nothing written that will surprise or reveal the unexpected. Perhaps
I’ve been tricked into thinking every world I create is habitable for those who have no need of others.
Perhaps unable to be halved, there hasn’t been a measurable whole to my being. Then again, that may
be only when either the past has vanished or the present’s seemed a far less generous gift from the
future.
PUSHING THROUGH
I never think about backing off. Yet having come so far to this forest, I hesitate at its
edge. Before I step into its midst, my eyes adjust to its thick density. Differing compositions
accumulating layers of this forest’s floor over time—thick crusts of buried leaves, brittle pine needles,
incidental feathers, cracked nut shells, moth wing remnants, ridged worm casings, fragile seed hulls,
exhausted flowers, hollow insect corpses, tiny bits of predator discarded bone, decaying logs of moss
under crumbles of softened bark, manure in all colors, shapes and volumes—all release, from beneath
each step taken, an ever-changing aroma steeped in the moment to moment death that self-
perpetuates, intoxicates, and dizzies my brain, all while reintroducing my imagination to a living soil
of dead things. So much silence is there that even my breathing cries to be heard. If a rock filled stream
slows itself down to a trickle, the songs of unseen birds which its usual downhill torrent suppresses,
would be better heard. Trapped by my longing and my losses, everything about me turns up missing.
Paths my feet trample before walking off the edge of the world, vanish in the air I leave behind. Now
all that’s left of me is what I’ve forgotten. Now all that’s left of me is forgotten.
Paul B. Roth, editor and publisher of The Bitter Oleander Press, is the author of seven collections of poems, including Owasco: Passage of Lake Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Long Way Back to the End (Rain Mountain Press, 2014).