FEATURED WRITER

Turner Roth

Southampton

 

Red sashes, red hats upon them,

marching back and forth in the barn.

Dull saber leads on, my power thick in ripeness

of Virginia moon, cotton bending to the

final exit fought for, come what may.

 

Didn’t see nor hear the fury at their door,

wild wind that breaks their cultivation,

how even now they scream in the night

in fits of terror that we were

 

What will be on the other side of it:

Luke chastised and

the spiny-backed fiends

driven from the temple we create on earth.

 

From hieroglyphic of corn leaf and blue-green sun

there is shown the way

beyond the curse,

beyond the terror of the name.

 

 

Ham’s Curse

 

Sour drop spilled out and rolled down his leg:

I am demon seed, scorched scrotum’s son, placed

as instrument at tent’s entrance, dark cool that drew me in.

It opened to me, enclave of forgotten womb, maintained now

as outpost for afternoon’s retreat,

splayed out as lamb entrails to mark how man’s curved back

is creation of the world,

hoe and axe beside him, sprouted out of ground

like the vine he cultivates:

having drunk too much of it,

sinking into miasmic sleep, direct descendent of the first living

touches the right hand of sorrowful Adam as

the crashing waves recommence.

 

Fits and starts, groaning and grinding,

powerful thigh swells and maw chomping at the bit.

He doesn’t notice me flitting as shadow about the wall,

sickled bits of twisted mulch spat out

from the shaft of creation, aberrant and bearing

the cost of what he has borne, we sink together

in the storm as I, a barnacled sore, reenter the chamber

of this sweet and sudden labor:

coming to the furthest reaches,

racked motor of genesis.

 

 

Turner Roth is a poet and essayist. He received an MA in Philosophy from Université Paris 8 and Kingston University, London. He lives and works in New York City.

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