The Triangle by Jack Xi

you have flown at me across the restaurant bathroom tiles

terrified thumblong, browned plastic leaf

         with cream paint,

blurred bottlebrush legs and antennae

whipping one-two to taste my skin

as I screamed so loud everyone 

in the world put down their forks to figure out why

for one thing it seems I have fed you,

crumb by shaken-off crumb all my life

so like a dog with its dangling tongue

you wagged to love me back with a kiss

for the other I am the body of night,

starless with rolled newspaper, red-capped 

spray can, even once a cartoon bible,

         and the best place to not be struck

is at the knees of the killer

begging I have a soil-dark 

         rice-shaped egg sac

         that still hasn’t hatched

         under the sink of this fine establishment

         so please do not kill me until I am dead,

and it is not fair that I end you

for you have cleaned up after me

         as you cleaned forest floors,

without unions, tips, never once

         a bucket,

and again you are American

and we do so love America;

I have shaped my tongue, like yours,

to lick grease off American wrappers under tables

or dart 3 kilometers through the sewage

         of pop that’s flushed to us

and we both do not speak

of where it is you truly came from –

200 years of slavers’ ships

reddening the ocean between

Africa, America, and sweet English soil,

soil tracked in by the enlightened men

who made this fork mine

         and this unfinished squid with mayo mine,

         and this off-white paint finish mine,

and this bathroom, 

         in which we avoid each others’ eyes –

         one incapable of tears, the other faceted 

         as jewels or listening towers –

the place where we ask each other why.

Jack Xi (they/he) is a disabled Singaporean writer. If you see them, they'd love to hear about the last bug you saw.

---

Other featured poems