Bermuda Triangle

First published in AGNI 93

Who told me about beauty told me to love these things the air the green the haze on the mountain.

These exploitable things the fragile soil the salt.

Show me need, need and its consequences conquistador.

Beauty is learned is constructed from shards of gold and daggers like love.

It was cooked in my parents’ shame in their parents’ shame look at it.

If beauty is the shroud to hide in I am sick of it I am sick of the rapacious eye of cameras the soaked oil of skin.

I am sick of beauty I purge myself with bark.

I am shamed by my love is a ship sent from Spain.

I am shamed by cum and money.

I am shamed by the cousins I turned my back on who turned their backs on.

I am shamed by the burning fuel of airplanes the glowing screen of in-flight entertainment.

I am shamed by the husk they carved for me to sleep in and what I paid for it.

I am shamed in my return shamed of all the prodigal this one unlanguaged unwhole.

My skin mixed of slaves who fled and slaves who remained and captors who whipped and captors who thought they cared.

My skin of the sea that swallowed ships whose berth is wood from my family tree.

The love of the slaver in the eye burn it eat it like fish.

Every ship that crossed the Atlantic should have sunk.