Vincent Toro
Belly bronzed bikini wasteland
of jello buck shots
keg stands and nights
that last three days
jacuzzi swirl of spray tanned glam
the gleam of soaked shirts and vomit
as the spring breakers
bump stumps bury plastic pints in sand
littering the boardwalk
with pizza grease
They lift their middle fingers to the sun
flash their cameras
tops and gold cards
a slick arrhythmia
bobbing to the monotone
of bass heavy dance
anthems Funneling
down their throats
gallons of distilled cane
venerating glass bottles
bearing the name of Captain Morgan was a sunburnt cyclone
famous for plundering
Panama and for cutting clean
off any finger with a gold
ring on it He could empty
a bohio faster than any tsunami could
making sport of torturing
slaves and puncturing their
women He took pleasure in hacking
off the limbs of village
children while those he shackled were mining
for his gold These deeds
earned him knighthood from the English crown
They say before his death he gutted
three of his men so they could guard
his treasure in the afterlife
and that today he still sails
the Atlantic as a phantasm
chasing down the descendents
of his enemies snuffing them in their
dreams by drowning them in rum
Vincent Toro is a Sorta-Rican poet, playwright, and educator living in The Bronx. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Rutgers University. Toro is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist for the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, recipient of an associate artist residency with the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and a member of The Macondo Writer’s Foundation. His poems have been published in Word is Bond, Rattapallax, Vallum, Bordersenses, Kweli Literary Journal, The Buenos Aires Review, and in the anthologies Coloring Book: An Anthology of Multicultural Poems and Stories, CHORUS and The Waiting Room Reader 2.