On your coccyx, a gold contusion
holds the sinews, ropebraid tarred
to the treasure ship of
your listing body.

I hurry to kiss it,
with the old piracy
woven into us
before torques ravelled.

My not-ancestors, the White Rajahs
gave Sarawak a gold fielded ensign;
but it never turned
to an honest Gibraltar.

I plant my kisses
above your arse,
the crack of your
terra nullius.

I’ve seen the blueprint of the slave ship Brookes,
the cargo in its wooden gut
is at least in part
my inheritance.

And this house that holds
seven tenths of my life
could never own me,
though the hold stays tight.

My roving dog
with a stick in his mouth
loosed on the fields
forgives my horror

that the branch in his maw
like a spar or a mast
is the still fur-clad
foreleg of a deer,

a leg that once sailed
in a whole perfect craft
never threatening to spill
its slight ingots of bone.