Koumiss or Shark’s Fin Soup

For Clifford, the white man’s intrigue
in eyeing those outside
the skin group that reddens
and blisters at a sniff of sun
can be likened
to the mass of arms
you order on holiday to impress,
or just to boot-start conversation,
or to test your tongue, measure
unexpected pleasure
against the visual wall.

He himself has been imagining
the gradations
and mottled inconsistencies
below the wool A-line
of the hazel maitre d’
at Plenty’s. He’s been dying
to unbutton and examine
the swarms of smooth harajuku girls
trotting about city monuments,
placing his pinkish arm
next to their palest lemon.
The tawny French rogue
sticking her tongue out at the driver
of the bus he is on and she
cannot get on
is honey to the gaze, charcoal hair
a thick lick, almost too weighty
for her kisscurl of a body.
And this morning, the urge
to unwrap and unwrap
that satsuma sari, spinning
the naked girl with her clay nipples
out of it like a teak toy,
the inky flourish of her hair
signing off, then coming to rest.

But it is a holiday, belongs in a book
on anomalies, malversions.