becoming black

in Pretoria
the High Court rules
that Chinese

South Africans
are to be reclassed
as blacks, having suffered

under years of apartheid
rule that identified
Asians as mixed-race;

aligned with the most
poor they can now
qualify for affirmative

action under Black
Economic Empowerment
codes, citizens erect their own

businesses, own shares
in other outfits & receive
empowerment transactions

under BEE conventions
the Chinese are one
step nearer to being

made less

invisible; a new
precedent set
their civic identity

a legal loop hole
handed down through
tribunal decree

Crater of Diamonds

Kort tells me a story
of arriving at unending fields
of overturned earth,

after hours of driving
an outing organized
by his grandparents

to pan for diamonds
we choose a day
after rain when the topsoil

has washed away, imagine
stones will sit out
winking on the surface

ours for the taking
“finders keepers”

signs mark the day
the crust was last plowed,
number of diamonds found

this month: seven
excavated yesterday: just one
when we empty

the contents of our dig
onto the ranger’s carrel
she points out quartz

then singles out
the citrine; crystalline
structures altered

by compression &
high temps, I finger chert –
rock flaked off to form the flint

you used to build blazes
in your boyhood accounts
touching the warmth

of metamorphic
matter hollowed out
of the body’s beryllium

we come back to mine

obstruction

the night monks
from Drepung Loseling
perform the closing

Dug-Sher-Seng Sum ceremony
to remove external obstacles,
a lecture takes place

on the other side of campus:
Tristan Taormino, feminist
pornographer draws a record

crowd of students in a talk
on polyamory, swinging
& sex-positive culture

Lama Gala is more
humorous then sexy
when he forgets the word

for “genitals” while describing
the root chakra “down there”
though it’s the throat center

from which tonal chanting
emanates, forming the color
of each seed syllable

through the control and inner
tone of the larynx -

I muse upon my ear-nose-throat
doctor who slid a scope
down her throat to tape

a video of herself speaking
“The Blue Guitar” – round
picture, the cropped tondo

displayed raw flesh
beating open & closed
how there was something

pretty obscene about
the whole act –
wondering

how the tenor
might have changed if
the recitative text

had been the body
of the Heart Sutra

red-shirt rally

six years before –
over Narathiwat,
Thailand, peaceful

protest marked by
folded paper cranes
cast from airplanes

since the coup,
matrons gather
used sanitary pads

from menstruating
women, to install
around a monument of

the nation’s protector

to harness the power
of human blood
arhats show their support

for the ousted prime minister
by donating plasma from
their vital humors

to make a monk
bleed, is one of the most
cardinal sins

displaying transfused
syringes collected
for the dump

a calculated push
to organize one million
units, so much blood could

“save many lives”

spilled before Parliament
spumous red fluid froths
& clots across concrete