Another Casualty of War
There are no men
standing by the fireplace, no rats
racing across the ceiling, no enemy
invading the house or the yard.
It is the illness, they tell me;
the illness, I tell my mother
until she can barely stand
the sound of the word, until
neither of us can speak
it again. It has taken him
from her, ripped him from me,
from reality. He awakens,
screaming go for cover!
searching for his shotgun,
while mom whispers into the phone,
begging my brother: come quick,
he has a knife.
By the time his son arrives,
my father is asleep again.
We can all pretend
it’s peaceful; still
his legs keep running.
~
punctuated
it is always the curves, the swerve along ess, the choice to follow road, not head into the Strait; decide (always a millisecond of space between gas and brake): straight ahead (eyes lock forward through rails and woods), crash down cliffs and settle into estuaries or rivers that turn around beds (but by then you'd be at your end); a choice — single straight mark dotted by death; body tense and determined betrayed by a thought of road beyond curve, a question that forces the foot gently left
Rooze works across multiple medias and genres and often spills one onto the other. As someone who lives predominantly in liminal spaces — in borderlands and hybrid identities — she is drawn to creative works that also occupy those spaces, works that do not fit neatly into the expectations of genre. Her ongoing exploration of liminal texts can be found at blurringtheline.org and her weekly Field Notes on writing can be read at http://www.roozecentral.com
