Evolution of Man —by Katelyn Roth

I.

Hanuman Langur, protected
in India for holy rites, dark-
skinned descendant
of the monkey god,
has a charred sugar skull face,
bullwhip tail of gray ash.

One male takes ten mothers
for his own, slaughters the children
of their former mates.
With firstborns dead, only
his offspring survive.

II.

Why I stayed:

because I was isolated. I
believed he would kill me. I
blamed myself. He
controlled my life. He
was my life. I
didn’t exist anymore.

III.

Why I left:

Garbage consumes kilometers
of Pacific Ocean, island of debris
visible to God,
satellites, astronauts.

Carp, char, grunion, hagfish,
the lamprey and naked puffer, are
trashchoked and blinded
by confettied waste, the sludge,
swirling above them, galactic.

 

Katelyn Roth graduated with her Master’s in poetry from Pittsburg State University. She teaches composition and general literature at Pittsburg State University and Fort Scott Community College. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press and here at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity.

Guest Editor Laura Lee Washburn is a University Professor, the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10^thAnniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.  Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri.  She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women.