Crushing

We smuggle crates of Beaujolais

through the squeaky pantry door.

We steal cases of cigarettes,

borrow the bulletproof

Mercedes to race through

the capital’s empty streets.

It’s wonderful, the peace.

No local can afford a car,

except the police.

The police stand beside their cars and wave.

The police lack petrol for their cars.

There’s a beer bottle shortage in the nation.

There are no bars.

Drunk driving is a hobby.

Driving while high is an art.

No one in the bad girls’ group is not

in the back of the Mercedes,

Vijay on Ashanti drum

all the way to the beach.

Money is worthless.

Cigarettes are money.

We are thirteen.

We rent a hut roofed with palm fronds.

We lie out on the sand with our

bottles of French wine

and our Hong Kong blondes

and look up at the Atlantic

Slave Coast midnight sky:

shine all my diamonds shine

’cause they really diamonds.