by Adrienne Friedberg

Potted pineapples
prickle adolescent fingers.
Tikki dancers in gold grass skirts
taunt aged aunts
and feed pubescent fantasies.
Flamingos, pink plastic,
hover, like super-sized swizzle sticks
in green clusters of sugar cane.
Stalks of corporate glory,
rotters of braced teeth.

A steel-drum band plays Hatikva.
Biblical plagues invade an island paradise;
tarantulas
lizards
ebola.
Slaves on a sugar plantation
sing gospel
in their best bandanas.
Migrant workers on a tobacco farm
dance salsa and meringue
on a fifteen minute break.
Jamaican rum soaks ice cubes and
blue herons stare vacantly from the brim of glass tumblers
at pint sized gardenia trees in full blossom.
Today she is a fountain pen.

Adrienne Friedberg is a recent graduate of the MFA nonfiction program at Sarah Lawrence, where she was the managing editor of the 2009 edition of Lumina, the program’s literary journal. She has written and published children’s books. Her essays and short stories have appeared in various online journals, including Ducts.org. Her last book, Field Guide to Finding a New Career, Hospitality and Personal Service Industry, will be published by Ferguson in the first quarter of 2010. She is currently working on a nonfiction novel about a kidnapping that took place in Los Angeles in 1949.