The desert at night: endless sand, sky.

Huddled in dugouts, they wait.

Centuries they have waited

under the spray of stars.

Only their eyes shine from cassocks.

You cannot hear the prayers

whispered in the sand's holes.

The stars twinkle. What prospect?

Nothing: endless desert

to the brink of dawn.

END

- Ishion Hutchinson

Royal palms all over; men shimmy up

the trunks, machetes clenched in their grins;

coconuts thud like dud bombs on the lawn...

At the edge of this U.S. protectorate,

sun mutes the frogs, whose choruses of night -

chirps named them: Co-qœi. By 'the world's

longest river pool,' hibiscus widen

red yawns; spider lilies and heliconia

mass in plots, their brass plaques, stolid

as palace guards, list phylum and class.

Our Hyatt has evolved a new wing -

one building, all time-share suites, teems

with whites like us. The old crescent hotel

is closed except for the casino, its dreamed

future, more whites buying time, stalled

in litigation. At each turn, shield-ferns block

unlit corridors; and elevators, gap-toothed,

jam like pocket doors. From Celia,

orchestrating poolside shuffleboard,

or from Diego, the Bohio's quick-draw

bartender (so many years alert to thirst

his hair's gone gray along with ours) -

we hear their every gracias imply: amigo,

let us be the last resort of your empire.

But how one power ends, the next begins -

that's beyond us all. Halfway around the world,

in Beijing, thousands labour sunup to sundown

to fill our Banana Republics. A few Yuan

skim the first off a pallet of beach shirts,

then I'll pay eighty dollars for the last,

unbuttoning its silk off the manikin.

His pecs a brazen gold in the shop-glass,

he knows another Medium's on its way

to cover him. Capital: there's no more

chance to tame it than to rid the Swan Café

of Chongas - those aboriginal crows

Julio curses and fans three menus at.

Every year they thicken on the netting,

peck a new hole in, raid unbussed tables,

crap on the plates, beguile then terrify

the younger kids. There's one now, and look:

another's battling a third over some fries.