SCHOOLBOYS
Here the idiot drunks stare down the boys still clearing
the ditch in the rain, culling the slush of vermin-dead,
the purged plugs of black water, the stink. The separated
sludge plumes the tin grooves of failed homes that float.
Brush-dents flood down to the village. Something joyless
dots the down-slope and settles. Here the boys machete
their names in the taro leaves, swing at whatever hangs
in the undergrowth or smells sweet, swarmed by birds.
Here they cut condoms into slingshots and slice branches
into guns or daggers. Here the men, sniffing ditto fluid,
watch legs tread the silt. The laughing boys slash
the upturned roots, tamp the pile of palms sinking.
Here they all go soft in the center, edgeless. They throw
clumps of mud from one breadfruit stump to the other
and catch and divide the weight with their knives.
