Al brother Robert Roth acabo de encontrarlo de chiripa en una entrevista al poeta argentino luis Benites en Sol Negro Robert Roth es junto a Arnie Sachar, que en paz descance, editor de la revista literaria And then, que reune una gama refrescante de voces no necesariamente consagradas en la literatura, pero siempre mostrando una gran diversidad, humor, las politicas sexuales y sociales vistas dede abajo y mucha, muchisima descarnada y honesta humanidad. Es tambien autor de el libro Health proxy, que sigue los mismo lineamientos y que en el aparente desorden de las vinetas ahi acumuladas nos devuelve el sentido de humanidad y lectura trascendente que casi se ha perdido. El brother Robert, que una vez nos escucho tocando huayno toda la noche en Brooklyn, ha tenido la amabilidad de compartir con nosotros un fragmento de And then, y otros de Health proxy. Yo brother you becoming famous in Peru
LEADING LADY
Robert Roth
de And then #15
My mother at 89 pounds, dehydrated, emaciated down from her regular 130 or 140 lbs, looked from the distance like a pre-pubescent girl of maybe twelve. Having used the bedpan that had been shoved under her, she was there trying to wipe herself, her ashen pubic hair and genitals revealed to the entire ER.
She wanted to leave, insisted on leaving. ‘I’m not going to rot on this street corner. Get me out of this drugstore.”
She said if we did not help her she would go herself; she opened her pocketbook pulled out a couple of dollars so she could get herself home. She would not let the pocketbook out of her sight. All the time she was in the hospital, the three hospitals really, and the two rehab centers, that pocketbook was always within reach.
My brother stood on one side of the bed and I on the other as we tried to prevent her from getting up and falling. She then started kicking and punching in two directions at once; not flailing out of control punches and kicks, but well placed and ferocious. She was fighting for her life. ‘I’m not going to rot on this street corner. Get me out of this drugstore,” she kept saying over and over again.
Adrenaline flowing, her body was lithe, coordinated and supple much like the young gymnast she had once been. If we had backed away from the bed she would have gotten off and fallen. I begged a doctor I had known from her nightmare ordeal at Elmhurst to give her something to calm her down. The doctor had actually spoken to me on the 6th floor of Elmhurst a few days after her time in the ER and apologized to me and then to my mother for how she had been treated. With not much prodding he and a nurse came over, syringe in hand. “I know what you’re trying to do” my mother squirmed away shrieking. “No you’re not. No you’re not” as they tried to raise her sleeve. She wouldn’t let them. Finally the curtain was drawn. A bloodcurdling scream came from behind the curtain. When they opened the curtain the kicks and punches still came at us precise and perfect but slower and slower and then slower still. Only when she fell completely asleep did they stop.
The next day.
“Why would they choose a skeleton to be the leading lady in their play?” my mother asked as my brother and I walked into her room. At first I thought she was joking but she asked it again.
“Why would they choose a skeleton to be the leading lady?”
“You are quite beautiful you know.” I answered.
“But why now?”
“Don’t knock it,” I said. “You never know when you get your break.”
She was sure a coffee company was bankrolling the film. But had no idea as to why. I had no idea either.
“Why would they make a skeleton into the leading lady for their play?” she asked. Her long hair flowing freely, her gestures broad and dramatic. “Do you think all those doctors will be in the movie too. Or do you think they’re too busy.”
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She paused.
“What about that scene in the drugstore where I was hitting and kicking both of you? Are they going to include that in the movie too?”
“Well, if they want the movie to be a hit they will have to.”
“A mother shouldn’t do that to her children,” she said.
She paused again. And then with more than a little pride, “Were you as impressed as I was with how energized I became?”
Fragments of health proxy
Robert Roth
“I can no longer be a young bride” was the first line of a poem I never completed. And now at 62 I have breasts that are starting to grow. My father also had breasts like this but bigger. I am a young adolescent girl just coming into puberty. A bit unnerving to say the least.
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Jacquelyn Carol who worked in an old age home was often the target of abusive racial and sexual slurs by people in various stages of dementia. Like a bad drunk there is bad dementia. I told her I apologize in advance for anything I might one day say or do.
“Why do you want to have sex with someone as fat as me?” she said. And instantly she became fat. And fat became ugly and undesirable. What was I doing with this fat ugly woman? Until then I was absolutely lost in the lusciousness of her sensuality. It took me a whole day to work my way through what her comment triggered in me.
I saw George Bush on TV and for the first time he looked like he understood that war was not a group of college students stealing the mascot of a rival school and delighting in the consternation caused. He looks weighted down by the pain he witnessed in a hospital ward and by the death toll in an attack on a mess hall in Iraq where 14 U.S. soldiers were killed and scores of others wounded.
It was while living on the Lower East Side that I absorbed on an unconscious level that white women gave birth to brown babies.
I can often point to the direction of a problem, but not fully identify it. So if someone says it is the economy, another person says it is psychosexual hysteria, a third person says it is runaway national chauvinism, I simply nod. One explanation to me is as good as another. It is only when policy solutions flow from these explanations that I begin to worry.