Rod Leith is an American writer, editor, and musician currently residing on Florida’s Space Coast. Born and raised in New Jersey, he feels a strong connection to that state’s literary legacy, particularly the contributions to modern poetry of William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, and Patti Smith. He also has a growing interest in the lyricists of the Great American Songbook, such as Lorenz Hart and Johnny Mercer, and how their work played a part in the development of American modernism. He studied English Literature at the University of Central Florida and works as an editor for McGraw Hill. His musical endeavours have ranged from free jazz to art-folk projects, in which his poetry has always been prominently featured. His work has been published by the New River Press.
WÁHTA SPEAKS
Your language is not
like long ago
when clutched phrases
nuzzled earth,
clear notes
caressed the sky.
Your lives are wasted,
rituals swollen
beyond necessity,
nothing more than spearheads
cast in darkness.
Too bitter to counter the charge
of apprehension’s vessel,
I can no longer tolerate
grim bipeds
green rituals
cannot bind.
I’ve lost control,
anxiety clause of worldwide mind,
counterfeit animals waste these streets.
What care ever comes from these two-legged
beasts?
We trees are last to know:
an abattoir of spaddled turbines
stripped my bark,
charred my crown,
in deliquescing twilight.
Now I’m captivated underground,
in finely minced tallow of flesh and bone,
spirits once content in umbra,
wrapped warily in hallowed fronds.
She plays her book
like an instrument,
in conspiracy
to bring us clamour;
four-footed futurists
massage my roots
with phantom memories
of propellered fruits.
I once made peace,
refracting
wind and sun,
but you never listened
to the splash
of dewdrops
on blades of grass
from the
sanctuary
of lobes and teeth.