AFTER WHICH

by Matthew Roberts

there is no after

life coupled in                the couplet

                                       of memory

                                      and forgetting          

                                                                        would that it

                                                                        rupture open

                                                                        all affect

                                                                                                ageless

                                                                                                trace of

                                                                                                the illegible

                                                                        punctured

                                                                        under

                                                                        prostrating

                                                                        pounding

                                                                        scraping

                                                                        skin

                                       (firewide)                 aerating

chloroplasts                   (landslide)

            stretched

beyond

            chloroplasts

stretched

            beyond                                                                        all measure

                                    punctured

                                    couplets

                                    of rupture

                                    wide illegible               written

                                                                        under couple

                                                                        under trace

all affect

of memory

and forgetting

skin                                                                                          stretched

                                                                                                beyond all

                                                                                                measure

                                                            there no

                                                            life would

                                                            open after    fireslide    (pounding

                                                                                                   scraping)

                                                                                                   (prostrating

                                                                                                    aerating)

                        and ageless

                                                                                                            after which

I remember thinking how it was you great-grandmother who taught                      1Der schrekliche, eben jetzt                                                                                                         

me there was no after1 who taught me that skin taken into the infernal               abgelaufene Krieg hat eine grofse

machinery of violence later awakens as if terror dug its face into the present       Anzahl solcher Erkrankungen

and ruptured it wide open are you awake are you listening maybe then you         entstehen lassen {…}

could imagine that I would love you and that to show you I would strap myself

in an upholstered seat bolted between bolted seats all stitched with the same       If trauma rises from a crisis,

 upholstery and ascend into the cacophony of a mechanical black shadow that     illness                    illegible,       

passes over the earth and its infernal grandeur which reminds me of the titan        immeasurable. Ageless {…}

who with twisted bridles fought each day to catch the sun and keep it and

though the story ends with a child whose descent from heaven unleashes a              Bei den Kriegsneurosen wirkte es

climate crisis is not the space between two words enough to tear us into                   einerseits aufklarend, aber doch

 prostrating protein that slides its loose limbed way into the earth and when the      wierderum    verwirrend    dafs

dirt is spent with tenants skin punctured stretched beyond all measure are not        dasselbe          Krankheitsbild  

the remnants captured and incinerated until there is nothing left but cinder            gelgentlich   ohne  Mithlife   einer  

cinder being common to anything that burns or rather would this page survive       groben     mechanischen    Gewalt

 me and give you room to find a home for this is why I write so that you might       zustande    kam  {…)

muscle open my imagination and give my mind what it cannot unravel though

 I have tried to grasp the matter pressed my fingers into plastic keys my digits         For instance, as with war

 turned into digitized chisels and rock hammers with these tools I cosigned my         neurosis: bodies taken into

history into the electrocuted light of online ancestral registries but I could               the  infernal  machinery of

not find you I could not find your family it’s just that years ago I had this dream²      violence   later   rest   on          

 it bewildered me for in it I heard you as you gave away a son who would                upholstery and awaken with     

 become my father’s father and maybe this is why I hear you as I pass the                the   sickness.        How          

shadow grass that grasps a trampled path to where your family was first taken          enlightening,     how

 and now here I am here I have landed and I am outside the concrete walls               bewlindering {…}     

 dressed as a troubadour petrified before the forest and still I hear nothing but

what if I could reach you would you tell me what part of you is buried in me           Schreck aber benennt den        

for that’s the part of me that’s buried in Poland or is it arrogant to think that            Zustand, in den man great, wenn

 and if it is then please remember that this is but a false poet’s notice and that          man in Gefar kpmmt, ohne auf  

I would reach into the earth just to stain my fingers with the dirt that held your       sie vorbereitet zu sein, betont das           

family when it was not safe for them to sleep but no I forgot about aeration             Moment der Uberraschung.      

forgot about the chloroplasts stretched beyond chloroplasts stretched beyond

all measure forgot about what may have happened to those who did not make           As though terror dug its face

 it over the Atlantic after which did they take to the atmosphere to congregate        into the trenches of the

 a sacred orbit and just stay there and when the sun’s rays fall beneath the               present and ruptured it wide

hemisphere does their celestial mass reflect the moonlight to contrail its glory         open; impossible to notice it     

 across the God forsaken sky and down I look at these hands for is this not the          at a moment’s notice.

place that bloomed a crimson harvest and that I would cut the petals to make

 a thread a red thread to tie around cut stems and then descend into the                  2Shadows made by shadows      

labyrinth for this is who I am I am Ariadne I am Theseus I am Minotaur all as          made by grass grasp a

one all taken together undercover and that I would trace the outline of your              trampled dirt path to where      

body see how I flick between finger skin and fingernail watch as I transplant            they were first taken. Names    

this muck into my palms cupped an inkwell into which I spit and rub to write           awaken to the cacophony of     

your surname Mauer fingers scraping on this rock this wall your last name               mechanical black forests and

alone remains for me to hold and I would do it for I have learned that this is             the camouflage of men who     

why we name not so as to enumerate the world we enter but to discover what           rip their way into the earth      

we still have left to lose and that is what survives the body to which a sound            for a chance to capture

 has been ascribed the sound survives the name the sound survives the time of          sunlight and its infernal

utterance when there is only rhythm rhythm pounding through the prehistoric           grandeur as when the

dirt it rises rising over this slumber sodded earth can you feel it when trapped           ancient titan- who with

 between angled frames of stone surrounding Łódź these monoliths are my              twisted bridles guides

lined pages on them I write this poem and I pray that their names return to me          an equestrian machine- each    

return to me unburnt so that I may look upon their unfinished silhouettes                 day descends onto the earth:    

uncouple affect from the embers just to write a path through memory through           muscled mammals needing

forgetting to find the image of myself that recollects the illegible trenches that          protein trample grass to feed

shape my wrinkled face the way fingerprints prune under the enlightened shade        in shadows. And here I rise

of an ocean wave must its cinerous salt be what I have left to taste of them as          in these slumber sodded

when smoke takes to the clouds and it rains and rains and showers.                        fields of capture black as

                                                                                                                                                                        mechanical    mammals                 

                                                                                                                                                                        awaken        camouflaged             

                                                                                                                                                                        cacophony guiding men to                                                                                                                                                                                  descend into twisted protein

                                                                                                                                                                        forests trampled shallow                                                                                                                                                                                      below the earth and its

                                                                                                                                                                      infernal dirt. Would I play              

                                                                                                                                                                       the part of troubadour and

                                                                                                                                                                       travel past horse trampled

                                                                                                                                                                       paths that grasp at slumber

                                                                                                                                                                      forests to sing of mammals

                                                                                                                                                                      sodded into mechanical

                                                                                                                                                                      cacophony? I await the

                                                                                                                                                                     wood nymph’s answer. Is                                                                                                                                                                                      she awake? Is she listening?

                                                                                                                                                                    Mauer, Mauer: call repeated.

                                                                                                                                                                    Taken   name    awakens

                                                                                                                                                                    concrete   angles   framing

                                                                                                                                                                    fields     sodded with sunglight

                                                                                                                                                                    machines and muscled with

                                                                                                                                                                infernal mammals who grasp

                                                                                                                                                                    the trampled grass and

                                                                                                                                                                   descend  into   mechanical

                                                                                                                                                                  black shadows as the twisted

                                                                                                                                                                  protein dirt sings the earth

                                                                                                                                                                  path back to Lodz:

                                                                                                                                                                  Allein                         Allein

                                                                                                                                                                  bodies trapped inside

                                                                                                                                                                  bodies trapped in time

                                                                                                                                                                  bodies trapped inside

                                                                                                                                                                  bodies trapped in time

                                                                                                                                                      Allein                                    Allein

                                                                                                                                                                  a line outside the ghetto.