Equal Opportunity

The american deputy assistant secretary of defense
for equal opportunity
and safety
is a home girl.
Blindness slashes our tapestry to shreds.

The moss-green military tailoring sets off her color
beautifully
she says “when I stand up to speak in uniform
you can believe everyone takes notice!”
Superimposed skull-like across her trim square shoulders
dioxin-smear
the stench of napalm upon growing cabbage
the chug and thud of Corsairs in the foreground
advance like a blush across her cheeks
up the unpaved road outside Grenville, Grenada

An M-16 bayonet gleams
slashing away the wooden latch
of a one-room slat house in Soubise
mopping up weapons search pockets of resistance
Imelda young Black in a tattered headcloth
standing to one side on her left foot
takes notice
one wrist behind her hip the other
palm-up beneath her chin watching
armed men in moss-green jumpsuits turn out her shack
watching mashed-up nutmeg trees
the trampled cocoa pods
graceless broken stalks of almost ripe banana
her sister has been missing now ten days

Beside the shattered waterpipe downroad
Granny Lou’s consolations
If it was only kill
they’d wanted to kill we
many more would have died
look at Lebanon
so as wars go this was an easy one
But for we here
who never woke up before
to see plane shitting fire into chimney
it was a damn awful lot!

The baby’s father buried without his legs
burned bones in piles along the road
“any Cubans around here, girl? any guns?”
singed tree-ferns curl and jerk in the mortar rhythms
strumming up from shore uphill a tree explodes
showering the house with scraps of leaves
the sweetish smell of unseen rotting flesh.

For a while there was almost enough
water enough rice enough quinine
the child tugs at her waistband
but she does not move quickly
she has heard how nervous these green men are
with their grenades and sweaty helmets
who offer cigarettes and chocolate but no bread
free batteries and herpes but no doctors
no free buses to the St. Georges market
no reading lessons in the brilliant afternoons
bodies strewn along Telescope Beach
these soldiers say are foreigners
but she has seen the charred bits of familiar cloth
and knows what to say to any invader
with an M-16 rifle held ready
while searching her cooking shed
overturning the empty pots with his apologetic grin
Imelda steps forward
the child pressing against her knees
“no guns, man, no guns here. we glad you come. you carry
water?”

The american deputy assistant secretary of defense
for equal opportunity and safety
pauses in her speech licks her dry lips
“as you can see the Department has
a very good record
of equal opportunity for our women”
swims toward safety
through a lake of her own blood.