Entities Otherwise:
excerpts from an untitled sequence

Forrest Roth

Cleaving A Mound

reveals stationary seedpod. He slaves down reddish clay sieving hardened layers. Brought above, a chunk of wasp nest cleaned out, emploring its hive the fill where it had fluent abundance. So he is in field longer. Planting awake. Other dearths try finding kindness. By pacing at property, wading through recollection of failed seedbeds that showed no sprout, he mends occasional ingenuity. If not grounded parsimony unrelenting. Broken shoots are up through what earth summons. Begged tilling but none given. Awaiting will last a thousand years, then a thousand more. He does not sense haste for this garden's restoration.


Nest of Specklings

across does powder blue dilute. Spotting enrages his walk alongside. Shore illumed thereabouts skim. As well a stir often unusual. When brought, few entities touch these bywaters, save winged insects spared reflection. A sunbeamed limb angling trees from their succumb over moment's inglorious. This redress will hazard. Sleeplessly presuming that always is everywhere. Teemed lilypads stay consulting their shelter, the lapped tenants underside. Each terrace intertwines slow breath scuttling past. Same basin for one another. With darkened maw of hearts gesturing, a yawning subaqueous anew. Shuffling forth the skins through filmy reaches never coveted. They do not stand opposite themselves stretching: all had seen this same expanse once harbored prior the Great Eyelid blinking approval. They persist sending corpses.


Soil-smooth They Cricket

onwards, dead on the weight, tussled over quarter lengths. It is the right evening for apologia, some antlers prod him, those honed in wooded columns where arcana grew. Blending as sylvan creatures would, their affinities play husk and sortings. They follow his perusal of the bankhead for shells but find only what has split apart. Fruit missing rind. This group flails its captivity gone as pressing by peculiar sounds. Then what cannot come from sky. Where hovers his memory will recite years serpentine. Let sight within please this terrain staring into instead, make those who rend at a touch, it speaks, for if drawn from waters, believe these shadows hence unbecoming. Indeed his ripeness has not taken wait in vain. Fearsome these foundlings scrounge, a blasted yea of them to greet. He strikes far too slender. Pinning their bodies he crushes heads under spade-heel. Regarding each spine takes much of his slack. He throws them upon limp water, and into vague incarnation. Should crevasses stay them forsaken. He will hope. Since he deems, It is done, sooner than.


A Skysent Invitation

his errand deliberates. Pagetorn in remedy breaking they who watch stones for proper shadows cast. At hour of least incline. Withdraw signals. First, the smaller animals carrying no ill will against plans of meager fortunes. Then earth-bearers that assist his work according to the sun's revolutions. And last, the grand creatures no trap can accomplish even possibility. By this ascending order of intelligence does prayer come to closing abrupt. Light weakens away procession being. This brief oracle, perhaps a mistake of having evening call without cleansing himself.


Seawaves

roll crashing a longer for heeding no more cries to help. Surely those were from him in latter-day passages, he who brought his own deaths. Immense plague and unrest. Masked pattern of following crystal shatter. As eager faultlines those subunctuous trifles land, their flesh absconds at a whim, now free from mooring. Scrolled broken praises turn upwards. Rushed over by the very deep welcoming them. Could this be another cold, they regress, accompanying our end eternally. It does not enter their contemplations. Textures are interior lit with faint scrutiny. Their terrible shelves set upon the need.


Asked Has Mentor Painstake

bellowing itself cloak

to refuse uncovered touches

hostile little which confirms

testimony cave valley chasm

one subtle ruin after previous

other than remains


Supine Betrayal

seals waterpath over those unworthy. In mock span of three sunrises travels them to the floor. Among celebrian dim they lay tipping sheets, undressing their shine so stitched upon. Incongruous elements: rain not striking heads, sunlight not creasing brows. Folium slides away. Fastens them in the depths. Cornered there are built chambers for private use. Stirring waters at lowest point until swirls freeze, can be glided along troughed path seeking center to bring them above again. Yet voices take more and more shelter. Stripped of physical body says appropriate comfort. Any liquid solid roost cannot implement. Beads dropped as wishes recognize they have no creator. Cutlery limbs give length sharpened on sound fate dwindling from wetstone. This awaits former bodies spelling the damage they will inflict. To save shape, abjured mindsets must predicate on his timed perception.


Shroud Keepers

in seamed pulse as attent should want. The ethereal violation by fishing lines cast into. So he has disturbed their waking rest. This wonderful progress could be wise maps afar, they debate, searching his shape again, he of presence enough to try ensnaring previous kill: such marvel of reasoning. Taken by his arrogance, they commence notation. For days studying his face. Copying the thrust of his arms into frigid water -- which they know it as, and become aware soon of empty reaches where liquid stays firm. The ablest bring air into their domain, surround. They circle. Inside its bubble will begin learning this abode. What can conceive baseless heaven arriving for them.


Forewarning

towards those who bide their leisure. A courtesy bequeaths yell stilling the lake, his recited verse. Mostly about storehouses of the deceased. With fish below him gathering, he is a boy again suspending bodies on pillars, tiredly chained, guarded by the sculpted throwing delights upon passers-by. These ensnared the young easily. An obsessed-over maturation: two lovers descending onto floorbed, stroking each other's arms. No pleasure but naive reassurance. For there over them stood another languishing. Wreath of flowing physique. Invited though only to halt a short distance away. Deciding whether forfeit or proceed. Staring at this gazing specter, he could espy pocks and cracks in the face, hesitation of the artist's device. Pecking birds had dug out mouths, eye sockets, ear canals for no nests, pressed solid order to restore due history.


Tides Dare Caress

themselves. Spill their albumen on the sands. Woe brings rocks for those to dwell under granted skies. Autumnals cease the instant they find grasses to their liking; and hiding in them, crafted hymns of cool shade. Their bellies no longer burnt. Their tongues no longer tasting saltwater. They leave themselves expanding in radiance over the inlet. Shells marble according to slew and slop of waving flow. They shed their scrim over alabaster spheres. Broken. They dent the surface upwards. Peek strong. White noses through lillies carried by stream. He spites at them, Leave your eggs on the banks. Feast instead on drizzle that rides infernal sightings. Refusal of this catch hardly stays his fury.


His Suffering Bland

in surfeit opens many amalgams. A whirring searches his attention's grasp, the insects in wake burrowing even through worms. Shivers spill him. Those things eaten by them, so few clothes he had her mend virtuous in meter. Lengthening out fabric loosens a tine. All the snake's doing, he mutters. But there are no such symbols. He sees limited reincarnation. No garden presents itself. Some darkening does place its mark when it is for her blame to find circumference of stems and seeds laid about. Her patterns guide the land's insolvencies toward his bed. Roots, tendrils, groundful emmanations directing wings to pasture. A flock of viscous fluids draining on the impatient lot. Host, you will be example prime, these new forms hum in semi-quaver -- though just as he turns his back on them.