RITA MOOKERJEE
On the Violence of Tanzanite
Liguanea, Kingston
It’s Thursday when tourists find their way into the plaza.
They want mini bongs and big tees in yellow,
red, and black. Some ladies eye the rings, mostly
dated and overdone except for a couple pieces
with odd violet stones. Picture the one from the Titanic,
the necklace the old woman drops into the water. I hate
that movie. I feel no love for the deadly rich, richly dead
or those penciled breasts atop the floating door.
What is it with white people on ships making bad decisions?
Like how about the assholes who ignored the CDC
two weeks ago, said screw the virus! and got on the Pacific
Princess anyway. They all live in vacation purgatory now,
stranded right outside Cali with a clear view of home
and no path in sight. Was it worth it? To eat frozen food
on a boat? Next to me a lady coos over a pearl cluster,
nodules fat like salmon roe. She thumbs a slim pendant.
Mistakes it for amethyst. But I know the true stone well.
I’m tipsy on Appleton rocks at the bar, so I imagine peeking over
my shades to say What if I told you that those elegant inky stones
come from a dusty mouth where strapped guards pace back
and forth scanning the water and the horizon for little kids
or thieves bold enough to climb to the mine after sunset?
Worse yet to see the tanzanite mining by day. Rocks hewn
and pried apart by greying fingers already shaking at the start
of a 20-hour shift because no, these beauties aren’t from this island
or any island at all. These rocks were trafficked here by white
people on ships, sailed across two oceans, unpacked in crates.
To be clear, every commodity comes with conflict. There is no
beauty that humans can fathom without spilling some blood.
Rita Mookerjee is the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Postdoctoral Fellow at DePaul University. Her poetry is featured in Juked, Hobart Pulp, New Orleans Review, the Offing, and the Baltimore Review.