The Roman sarcophagus shows Miriam, with her spangled tambourine,1
as she crosses the dead sea, women dancing as coral waves spread,
their escape from Pharaoh captured in alabaster stone & gypsum red –
will we too survive, our lungs flooded, the indifferent machine?
& will we reach the other side? Now carved in Roman dress, 2 wet dream
that Rome will be saved. The bloody victors determine the past: say
Miriam stands in for Mary & their assuming Christianity paves the way
unchecked for ‘righteous’ violence, our relics now in ruin. 3 The regime
buries its secrets. 4 Who will keep our statues? The Heygate Estate torn down
for millionaire flats. 5 Southwark council signs away the Bodeguita Café,
deprived of customers, all dispersed & only flies feast as queso sweats.
Where is the blue-hair girl sucking tamarind, the tangerine mum who frowns
at the stars, the Big Issue seller with cracked cheeks who kisses each day
hello? 6 High-rises groan with skeleton arms & burnt-out silhouettes.
_________________________
1 under the guise of scientific enquiry, Barbasco
is patented by UPenn. Sacred rituals pillaged by turista-
pirates outsourcing trials for progesterone to Puerto Rico;
2 forced Boricua women are guinea pigs for birth control
to protect against revolution. No outcry as todas operadas
under the guise of scientific enquiry. Barbasco
3 now perpetually US owned: PR population control
marketed internationally as la revolución feminista;
pirates outsourcing trials for progesterone to Puerto Rico
4 & no one cares as ghettos overflow & the legacy of Jim Crow
fills up prisons, children wrenched from homes. The bourgeois
under the guise of scientific enquiry, become Barbasco
5 philosophers & anthropologists, all following Rousseau.
These hippy liberals, perpetual & drifting, cum for limpias:
pirates outsourcing trials for progesterone to Puerto Rico.
6 They slash her open, rubber limbs, her bamboo womb,
fallopian tube, fuck the first with thick thighs, pay her
under the guise of scientific enquiry. Barbasco
pirates for progesterone outsource trials to Puerto Rico.
Maia Elsner
Maia Elsner grew up between Oxford and Mexico City. Her poems have been published in Colorado Review and Willow Springs, among others. She was a finalist for the 2020 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, shortlisted for the 2020 Bridport Poetry Award and commended in the 2020 Troubadour International Poetry Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Un Nuevo Sol: British LatinX Writers (flipped eye, 2019) and Field Notes on Survival (Bad Betty Press, 2020).
