Out of Port-au-Prince

we've never lifted fists of its soils
or drank its whiskey
death is a land unvisited
a myth we all believe in
none are expert
rumor is king
and we hate it
it is a reckless fool
for the still, answerless organs it leaves us
and the mad silence that it sits up in our chairs, just there, at our tables
outside our daughters' rooms
upon the shoulders of our sons
it doesn't know its own calculus
audacious enough to call away
our loves, to populate itself
and send us, mutilated
to look for them in the trees and cities we never
wished to know