II
Observed over Miami, the city, an orange slick blister,
the houses, stiff-haired organisms clamped to the earth,
engorged with oil and wheat,
rubber and metals,
the total contents of the brain, the electrical
regions of the atmosphere, water
coming north, reeling, a neurosis of hinged
clouds,
bodies thicken, flesh
out in immodest health,
six boys, fast food on their breath,
luscious paper bags, the perfume of grilled offal,
troughlike cartons of cola,
a gorgon luxury of electronics, backward caps,
bulbous clothing, easy hearts
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
lines of visitors are fingerprinted,
eye-scanned, grow murderous,
then there’s the business of thoughts
who can glean with any certainty,
the guards, blued and leathered, multiply
to stop them,
palimpsests of old borders, the sea’s graph on the skin,
the dead giveaway of tongues,
soon, soon, the implants to discern lies
from the way a body moves
there’s that already
she felt ill, wanted
to murder the six boys, the guards,
the dreamless shipwrecked
burning their beautiful eyes in the patient queue
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Let’s go to the republic of home,
let’s forget all this then, this victorious procession,
these blenching queues,
this timeless march of nails in shoeless feet
what people will take and give,
the passive lines, the passive guards,
if passivity can be inchoate self-loathing
all around, and creeping
self-righteous, let’s say it, fascism,
how else to say, border,
and the militant consumption of everything,
the encampment of the airport, the eagerness
to be all the same, to mince biographies
to some exact phrases, some
exact and toxic genealogy
Copyright © 2006 by Dionne Brand. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
