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Beneath the black jungle palms, monkeys.
They remind me of me, my tools, my cartoon
heart that’s shaped like a heart. Other better animals
are pronounced as being heavenly, in this native island tongue.
I’m not true and I’m not free,
I know I should go somewhere official, somewhere right,
like make my way back to the mainland, get home
from my violet days of taming parrots and sunburn.
If I could slather on my own tame desires
instead of the monkey’s touch while I sleep,
I would not want but still I would burn and for
next to nothing. Some coconut milk, a better name,
this is no way to get back home. There’s time.
Turn black.
IX
Saying the word sonar is satisfying.
During the Cuban Crisis, we smoked sugarcane and
they dropped depth charges by our family home.
I watched one soldier walk into the river and float away.
I barely had time to speak. Little paths above the wheat
pennies strewn there filled with water. Eddies. The industrialist
got on his hands and knees. Short-sighted, he gathered change in.
There was nothing on his mind. Ripples moving through.
A dream so violent I awake actually afraid of myself.
A way of decoding trees. A way to hear the night air.
Somewhere, a low beeping. A sleep-start.
Bring me back to the glory I felt that day when
we only knew the beaches as a liminal space.
(________________________________)
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Ben Estes, Ben Fama, Ben Kopel, Ben Mirov, and Ben Winkler wrote these poems as part of a collaborative heroic crown. The sonnets and a group erasure of Yeats’ “Under Ben Bulben” are forthcoming as a chapbook.
