by Scott Ting-A-Kee
1st Place Republic Bank Open Poetry Competition
The Guyana Annual 2018
"As Chinese women are scarce, the Chinaman always has a coloured woman as a concubine.”
-Fung Khui Syu’s Report on Chinese Settlement in Hopetown, 1865
I am the head but you have made me the tail.
O Tye Kim, the Shepherd of Hopetown,
pinned to a bed by intangible chains of
lust, temptation, addiction; a saintly-sinner’s
predicament with the forbidden V.
Forbidden fruit made Eve fall,
Now a Queen of Sheba has felled me:
(She will forever be enshrined as the “coloured woman”).
You are black and comely
You have ravished my heart.
Intoxicating honey
drips
From your
lips
as you tighten and suck me in.
My tongue is now forked like Xiangliu’s.
My brain aflame with the si…sweet pleasure of
your body’s symphony with mine. . .
How can a fall feel like divine transfiguration?