Today my eggshell is The Conquest
of America by Todorov
marred by the enormous
canvas in the capitol
rotunda of the Landing
of Columbus. What freak
would paint that trash on an egg?
I was conceived
when two people born
at the exact same time on opposite
sides of the planet turned away
from the international proletariat.
The picture crosses the cracks
on my face, which I refuse to touch
without turpentine. An artist offered
to house the fragments once
in gauzy fabric, with their signature
narrow machined tetrameter hem
but I needed it too many times.
Though I am on leave
from the history of harm
I can’t help but wonder
why it took so long to paint.
Sometimes it shifts so Columbus
is on his back holding
his flag to the sky
and above him the lumpen
mud Indigenous
creatures cuddle
trees confused about climate.
It must be both America and accurate,
the fiction, the downward-
pointing chevrons toward his crotch. The
slashes in his short
padded hose remember armor
though the innocent
recipient of destiny
needs none. While I guilty
am armor only. I
am only spoils, ill-gotten, mostly
metal, arranged with art
as if only
a pile, a mess, a
mess with the most
precious and insulting
elements visible, as if value
made things float. So I hold
torrid and temperate
climes together
on my oily
broken face. The shadow
of someone’s bookend
against sunbleaching
dapples my gaze. You can count
the weapons and the crosses
and submit an untorturable
report of the losses.