Noontide, Fort Christian

Marvin E. Williams

A shrieking seagull catapults
from sun’s niggering rays, his wings slapping
winds which swat the slack flaps
of sailboats huddled, besieged seadogs,
groggy in this hurricane portal.

The epileptic noontide froths at the mouth
of the channel, hawking, spitting its ague
halfway up the thick Fort Christian walls,
walls rejuvenated in ripe-wound red
for the tourist’s bandaged dollar.

Cannons preside above the spastic waves,
miming eurekas for eardrums timbered by
Cortez’s thunder: Their eyes dim
from wildfire into hearth for those visitors
wondering at this
relic of empire in black gestation.

With maps ushering them down hallways
metabolized in their blood,
they photograph the Rustoleumed cages
whose clangs clutch the slave woman’s
conflagration,
the bones of her cohorts,
the bones of her cut-throats,
the ashen communion of ghosts.

Copyright © Marvin E. Williams