African Queen: The Poem

She turned nine shades of God
pulling dreams off a plastic leech
in the tributaries of Lake Victoria,

the horizon black as Africa,
the one white pimple
rising above the Rift Valley.

How long she’d been a woman
with her womanhood intact
she could not subtract.

Neither a bronc rider with one hand
waving in the air
would have caught her attention

nor a far-off war, that is,
until the Germans arrived
like fierce lions.

The jungle noises
became as hard as stone
and stood upright beyond the village.

God had descended to a minor character,
her eyes shone brightly
against the lakeside sunset.

You can’t tell which adventure
is really an adventure
until the end or the beginning.

The future is not funny
when you’re standing in the past.
Her sex wet in a song

that her body sang for him.
Tribes dancing, jumping up and down,
the monosyllabic breasts of native girls

brimming with invisible desire,
ancient as australopithecus
on this Dark Continent.

Rowing towards shore
they kick up
the endless lake.

The Germans, meanwhile, sink.
The cement blocks of their hearts
perfect on the bottom.

A future is bubbling up
inside of you and me
right now.