On Learning that Chiquita Brands Financed Paramilitary Killings in Colombia by Shou Jie Eng

Listen: everywhere the earth is flecked
     with grey. A shadow leapt
     from the ground to a tree. In Miami
     a banana is duct-taped to a wall.

Blocks of granite lie like sarcophagi, pressing
     shim-faced against the grade. You pressed
     unashamedly against me. In Miami
     the press rushes to explain

Duchamp, conceptual art, the lineage
     of a banana. When splitting stone
     you begin by driving wedges
     into lines of weakness.

You drove me to wildness. The critics
     do not talk about material relations
     between persons and social relations
     between things.

They cannot. I watched as workers craned
     a quarry-block onto the bed
     of a wire saw. To be worked.
     When you tried to explain

the recent history of Colombia I kissed you
     to make you stop. I admit that.
     The history of Chiquita Brands
     belongs to that of the banana.

As you quarry stone you leave behind
     benched earth. One time
     we slipped into each other
     on a bench. When they write about

the art banana they always say it cost 20 cents.
     As if the money-form of a banana
     explains how we met. When we sat
     on a stone kerb and you described a revolution.

Shou Jie Eng is a writer and architectural designer. Originally from Singapore, he runs Left Field Projects, a studio practice located in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a finalist in the 2024 Kenyon Review Poetry Contest and teaches courses on drawing and representational topics at the Rhode Island School of Design.

2 December 2024