The Taino pulls me from the sea where I’ve
been having tequila shots with drowned men.
He insists his century isn’t over, that I’m his

lodestone, I who have left my lifeline marks
on many wrong lovers.  We predict Columbus’
purgatorial stripteases, but then the tides we

wear play with marked cards.  The Ace of Hasty
Spades, dropped on the sand, roots into a palm tree
for us to sleep under together and language is

given shore leave.  He shows me his wounds and
I pull out the arrows and turn them into parrots
quoting the sun that lends us the shamelessness

of desire: think of how waves and what was
under water reunite, their ahistorical kisses
full of stories to be smuggled in seashells.

After a slow goodbye, he swims into the sea.
I’m left with an island to coax into forgiving me
for losing its sextant.  Becoming a Taino is

hard work, my life in literature as firewood
to teach me how to sing back to stars beyond
consciousness.  I doubt love less and less.



(Taino is the name of some natives who lived in the Caribbean before the Europeans)