Provisions

Weno Island, Federated States of Micronesia

Always this grinding out another afternoon near the abandoned

Japanese rail ties, waiting for the boys to gather, always this

leaving Iras at three from the meetinghouse with our backs to the road,

steeplechasing the flatbed through the monsoon-grooved pot hole lakes

still shin-deep after a month without rain, the wheeled ripple of oil-slicked silt

splashing up to the doors, the cadre of kids plodding the mangrove

edge with machetes and slingshots, chickens tied to ropes like pets,

ribbed mutts sulking, the dirge-slow cruise into Nepukos, always like this

on a payday in April, at TTC, Shigeto’s in Assa, where everything comes

in cases or sacks, in the lowly-lit aisled zorri chaos, where on Friday the State’s

Compact funds trickle down, the late-day waiting with five fifty-pound bags

of Guam Rose, three stacks of Triple Three Mackerel with oil, the soft bones

like fried noodles, the Yamasa soy sauce in the two-liter handled jugs,

the square tins of Argentina corned beef off the ship from Darwin,

the locked gelatinous settling of lard, Aji-No-Moto in the bulk bags

they don’t sell anywhere but the stateside oriental joints. Here we are

sweating it out in the loadup with flats of Chinese colas, Black Label

luncheon slabbed into side supports, with the pwi pwis, the mwasamwas weight

of a dozen cartons of the super-pasteurized, the sweetened condensed

Carnation glaze, the sun beating a syrupy film into the rubber-patched

steering wheel, the sniffing gas men stalking shade and the bent benches,

the blackened women selling rotten ropes of tapioca tin-wrapped

for whites, warmer than anything in our bodies, everything not fresh

from China, or Japan with the pirated yellowfins, sold back headless,

in cuts of Amerikana fillet, mashed to a puck sized pulp, the turkey tail

not considered fit for food in the states, the fat gristling down,

the FDA reject giblets scraped from the Perdue live-kill rooms,

twenty-five quartered California thighs and legs, Iowa pig bile

thawed to a mucus, fresh from the docks with corners rat-pocked

from the float over, Korean Kimchee in the glass bottles,

as fancy as you get this equatorial, this far nowhere, these festering

Pacific pimples, detritus specks of mistakes with our diabetic feet

and boil-scarred calves, with the spray-painted governmental signs,

the sputtering hope in the monthly Mobil ship, these ram-shackle

ghetto remnants of Honolulu, the eroded aid of the Trust Territory era,

ten-year-old vendors of single cigarettes, stacking the Filipino pancit

up past the window, squares like blocks of C-rations, blind spots

moving with the sloped border of the jungle, the derelict dust rising

for the first time since the bowels of the Chief Mailo, ratcheting

the stick into any gear that’ll move this much weight,

and we’re not the only ones with cases of Red Horse and fifths

of Gem Clear, the prim single travelers of Fleishman’s for the road,

bags of puu and lime to cut the cheeks, the stinging nic-hit of Salem

in the lips, drive it back to where it started and pound down another

for whoever goes stoning the pickups with the tinted windows

and wailer lights black-marketed from Hilo, always like this,

families of land plotted out like this, on the roadside the same muted

emptiness sitting on the Dirty Curve before Sapuk, nothing left

in the flickering end of gas in the compound generator, and never anything

lighting this place but the trash fires, or stirred fluorescence in the tin-lid

cut shores, going bright in only the heavy slaps of tide, fighting to get the light

out, sparking a copra husk in the used oil barrel rusted to a sieve,

cranking the wick up the kerosene lamps, searching the mountain grass

going clear in the first hour of moonlight, always like this, how it grows

articulately in the cloudless night, blade to blade a blend of them

trading angles in the wind, it’s all enough to lie down

and strain for, to sit rigidly waiting in the vine-thick air.

Explanation

What happened on the straight shot by Chee-Young’s Family Store?

The cousins say the boy with the bleeding calves cornered a girl

under the unfinished outhouse. This is the word everywhere.

The liquor stand boy said it started when rocks flew from a breadfruit

branch, when it was still windy, but the girls parsing their hair for lice

say no way, there were two of them, and their pants were down,

same as always. The blanket was clean on one side. The one dog

whose vagina always hangs loose and bleeds barked the whole time.

The goiter dog might be dead. That’s what the kids say who were playing

with the brake pads of a broken car. The uncles drank yeast

and Asahi, and sang those songs about home. Their sons

agreed and dented an oil barrel with rebar and pig bones.

The rusted satellite dish echoed the sound. The boy who speaks

good English says a gun is buried by the cookhouse,

next to where the thighs bleed out. The one who works

the Dirty Curve told a man bullets are only for slingshots.

That explains it. The mothers say no one screams like that.

It was more of a muffle. The volleyball net was tangled

and ripped open. The man with scars and big ears

insists the house with the warrior masks shook.

The painted names on the Japanese tank bled, but the high titles

won’t look to the cliff. They speak the old language and spit. The rain

factors in somehow, and the green clouds hanging over Mabuchi Hill.

The gas-sniffer shakes his head at the cage hut where four men play pool.

Follow the bleached rat-tail says the unmarried woman. If he holds

anything in his hands, don’t look at the fat of his face. Forget

what she says and follow the trail of batteries to the rail ties

says the boy who the boys call a fag. Maybe they took the two A.M.

to Guam. The aunties wonder what will happen in the taro patch.

It could be worse with the gas can or the vines. The order of things

makes a difference. The girl with the burned face says so, she wants

this piece by piece. She says the men will come when the hibiscus

ropes dry, and when they point and pick it all up, the prayers are done.