Monoculture
“Fifty years ago, we were eating better bananas…[until they were] declared commercially extinct due to the disease...leaving no other choice but to burn them down.”
It lay silent, deep in the soil: Tiny Fusarium clamping bony fingers On Michel’s yellow throat,
The fruit’s lips split, tongue parched And seizing between thin rows Of clenched, starchy teeth.
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The plants collapsed, kneeling to the soil: Varnished a deep brown by the tropical sun, Their gasping roots unable to drink.
So one by one, they lit the fields, The crooked fruit cooking inside, The skins blistering as they burned.
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In Nampula, they hoed the ashen soil And planted Cavendish in long rows, And the trees sagged with abundance.
But they would not ripen under the hot sun, The green fruit stubborn, Clenched in bunches like fingers to a fist.
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The plantation fenced in the soil, As if the iron posts would house the trees Or cradle them in their thin arms.
The workers washed the equipment, The great aluminum teeth shining With fungicide spray in the setting sun.
© 2017–2018 DEVRA
