i cleanse myself of your two-legged ills,
cool as my breath upon a thousand dry necks,
freeze, and regard
death-rattle-arias
to be found by turistas come morning.

you are not my children,
my first world, private school informed angels,
yet you were my tartan,
counterfeit and used to wrap
your pulsating lesions.

cough, and curl up, as you did in mother’s womb,
left arm, turned to sponge
absorbing the penetrations of a thousand needles.
eyes, gold-crusted as sunset on the tundra-rough plateau.

i am not your home,
take thee back upon slave ships,
to be buried and shackled somewhere else in the empire.