Inferno in the American Forest
paul dresman
A telephone rings in the middle of the night.
“Get out now!” a friend yells.
They leave in slippers and robes, a down jacket,
a hooded rain pancho covered in ashes, a silly hat.
They drive the canyon road through the fire—
sparks billowing across the windshield.
_________
Last millennium’s vehicle frame rusts,
bare ribs in a desert of remaining hulks,
a desert of refrains: cars, wars, massive burnings.
These are depictions, re-creations, simulacra
or the lasting evidence stored in every head.
Sometimes, memory, turning and turning
in its widening labyrinth, will recall
the momentary thrall, or the dismay,
the broken remnant of what was to be different.
Here is a hole where an eye could be seen,
there a siren—warning, blaring.
A gush of conjured smoke, a distorting mirror,
peroxided pulley and winch
manipulated to accentuate
the beast within, as a circus might celebrate
the roar of the big cats, the howl of clowns,
the enormous gasp when Christ the Acrobat leaps
into the ring, and the lions feast.
_________
In time, flesh turns to marble.
In time, we are ground into particles.
In time, you never quite get around to considering the tight spaces
where we must contain ourselves, compounded
limitations, boundaries, borders, bigotry and tall walls
to pretend security, to restrict.
There is no salvation,
no rescue, no exit.
The heat’s rising, the trees dying,
the earth cracks under the sun’s blaze.
Your throat turns dry and sore
from all the smoke
as your mind splits, aches
in the face of tomorrow
on a voyage to hell, cast adrift
in a sea of fire, a sea of ennui,
helplessly lost in a time
of fear and death,
division and hate,
going under waves of disease,
the voices crying,
“I can’t breathe.”
Paul Dresman
Poet, translator of poetry from Spanish, essayist, Paul Dresman was born in Los Angeles. He has co-edited three literary journals, including bi-lingual helicóptero, and he has taught literature and writing at universities in California, China and Oregon, where he lives in Eugene. In 2020, he won the poetry award of the San Miguel Writers’ Conference.