oh, wouldn’t it be nice

by L. Acadia

the one road
rings the island
I think the people don’t want us here
glare when we pass,
double on electric scooters
they’d never wear helmets like we
(do) like colanders
in terms of porosity and peril
not like
flying-spaghetti-monster critique:
we are uncritical
just grin from sun to salt air,
the mythic flying fish
beach bar hammocks and fairy lights
picturesque as their painted boats,
just look away as we pass
the nuclear waste site
oh, see those hobbit-houses
built into the slope
oh, isn’t it so nice their culture
is preserved
‘indigenous design’
like the skirts and sashes they’ll wear
for a selfie with you—
50 New Taiwan Dollars.
There were no tourists
on Orchid Island
under Japanese colonial rule
no one allowed on or off:
quarantined
as an ethnographic experiment.
Oh, we should do land acknowledgement
sit down to eat fish
deep fried with their wings out
this is unceded Yami/Tao land
they called Pongso no Tao
(island of humans)
Tao means humans
Yami is the name by which they are known
(passive voice)
dubbed by the Japanese
oh, isn’t it so nice they still live here
preserved
such rich culture
I mean vibrant
like the tropical fish
so abundant in the warmth
of the Kuroshio/Japanese Current
named by/for the island’s first colonizer
flow up from the Philippines
like the Yami/Tao
oh, can you picture them sailing here
on those picturesque boats
(presume the ‘indigenous design’
hasn’t changed much in 800 years)
oh, no wonder they came here:
look at the gorgeous landscape
right out of a fairy tale
where you’d find mountain
goats like those ones
block the island ring road
they look staged, placed there
all
perpendicular to the sun
picturesque
Oh, wouldn’t it be nice
if they’d just
move
out of the road
so we could pass.