On some nights I crave
bland starches and grave-rich
dishes of smooth buttered plunder.

Atahualpa, Oh Atahualpa,
what remains of your people?
What remains of your tribute?
What remains of your bent knee
and strangled betrayal -
having given all
and taking only a book,
a word, a promise?

Bags of Incan bone go cheap these days.
Bags of Incan bone fight for breath
among the well-heeled fad-diet set
and soft sweet rotting onions.

Boiled, roasted or shunned -
massacre lives on the skin,
brown and dusty.
Plunder grows from the eyes.
And the flesh weeps the milked tear
of the Andes.