Friend, you say, and I remember Mississippi,
that city shaped like a gondola. I remember
writing about boats carved like the elbows
of a beautiful lady on the thighs of her lover
who always read, and lie down to sleep
like an open book. We came to this island to read
by the sea, and we vowed to leave by ship. So much
for Alice to do at home; incantations, prayers, magic,
voodoo, and rudder, to bring us back to ourselves,
lost in the skin of John Boston the white labyrinth
who teaches geography, and believes in the Globe,
not maps not borders, the single country which leads us
to Hitler’s vision reflected on the UN building in the U.S
hammered with the butt of a gun into the roots
of our brains. I love you, I say, and you open The Herald
to the page where Alice dies and they are to bury her
close to a hundred years old Monica. How long have I been here,
I ask. The question all wings, carries me on air across
the ocean. Child of water on metal ferry, going home
to mother, leaving his origin for the white girls to fondle.
