“Ashes its leftover words in my mouth.” A Poem by Jennifer Elise Foerster

“Ashes its leftover words in my mouth”

The singers have fallen asleep in their cars,
small camps smoldering. What they didn’t sing
ashes its leftover words in my mouth.
Where are you going? The Sun. The Moon.
Where did you come from? Warrior. Star.
Yet in my doubts I strain to hear
the bubble of salt behind sand snails,
the ocean pulling back into its mouth.
What detritus, the mind. I wade knee-deep
in our stratum’s mycelium, laced
like splattered aluminum paint, a mat
of leaves on the forest floor will receive our fall,
we imagined. Before we were forced to leave
we charted the denser galaxies,
trophied the antlers of three trillion trees
to carry with us as a reminder
of the History of the World’s End People.
There was no miracle, no other home.
I look to the east, the fire roads.
Marsh birds are lifting from the methane field,
dwarf white roses blooming in my suitcase.