her story was South Africa, her movements unsteady
through the slats, I see the horizon rising and falling
the roll and pitch of the ship propelling us
towards that land of Apartheid, an impossible past
where black or colored could only watch/live/endure the world
through slats of imprisonment only their horizon never shifted
not a voyage of discovery and privilege
from her a story of maps of the land extraction tourism crops
to us, the listeners, our stomachs churning in the roll and pitch
of exposure we could not want to know would not want to believe
the pitch and roll, the splash of the waves against the hull,
the propellor, the endless whir of history that still churns their lives
butter cut by metal blades only to be spread as the other permits
to her, home, this magnificent place is complicated
I only see the horizon pitch and roll through the slats
my stomach rises to my throat
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