Fleshed Out of Haiti

Porous bones line the inner sanctums
Clotted sorrows in corridors of flesh
Rivers of death
Tear skin to carve notches on cheekbones
Grinding teeth on gravel to brimstone
Valleys
Cut like knives in terrain, twisting
Rounding edge into bellies
Beneath these...
Cracked and sunken shanty abodes
Haiti
Lay prisoner to bars of brown earth
Mulching to what remains of her breath
In broken lives to (what) livelihoods left
On oil drum skins...
On stilted legs they spin
Broken shacks to signify shackles
Crotches ‘neath arms to keep sentiments afloat
A people left to fade, stone by stone
They, withered spines on black hills
Toting vacuous eyes that cling
Visions braving the shadows to vigil
For how many bones
Twisted on steel beams to hang like chaplets
Pit gravel to skin knees, and prayed
In Mantras quelling the flames of atrocities
Rhythm carving fingers to fish hooks
Threading black soil for signs of living
Hands a shovel to bear lacerations,
Soon
Turn upward fold to catch manner from heaven,
Till
Stomach churning a massacre, digest
And spit
500 for thousand to rest
And still
They offer thick blankets to wrap you,
Haiti
And see you die slowly

In its folds