The Banker's Rendezvous With Mother Jones' Children

The Banker:

Take a walk through a resin factory,

watch freighters grow towards the sky,

uprooting fledgling kites

& sinking beehives, loud in their laughter

When the emperors weaves

themselves a new silk robe

& betray hints of scarlet

on moon-stained razor

is when you know it is time to blindfold

your children with laurel leaves, the same ones

snatched from beneath bloodied rifles

& it is the honeybee’s oblivious fangs

that you extract first from their earrings.

Like every good heiress of a gilded hegemony

tip-toeing on emergency lights,

the dozen neon flashers,

I will swallow Osiris whole when the suit-wearing sharks

encounter desert grains in a mermaid’s cage

on monochrome voyages. & it is why, now,

that they press acrylic leaves

over a snow-tombed Book of Life.

Just as Job’s tentacled machines remember

their first bloodletting, so must you remember 

your powerlessness against my greed. Remember. Your mother

passed it to you in scintillating armors, good as fish bait.

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Cover Photo by Stephanie Lima.