A BANANA, A WANNABE OLIGARCH, AND A CONCEPT WALK INTO A BAR

by Tom Lagasse

A Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur has followed through on his promise to eat the banana from a $6.2m (£4.9m) artwork he bought last week. Justin Sun outbid six others to claim Maurizio Cattelan's infamous 2019 work Comedian - a banana duct-taped to a wall - at Sotheby's auction house in New York. He ate the fruit during a news conference in Hong Kong where he used the moment to draw parallels between the artwork and cryptocurrency. The banana is regularly replaced before exhibitions, with Mr Sun buying the right to display the installation along with a guide on how to replace the fruit. —BBC, November 29, 2024

The banana would have eventually rotted
like all organic things do.  He untaped it, 
unpeeled it and ate it because he owned it.  
Of course, the banana and tape were symbols 
for the concept behind the work of art, 
the way crypto is a concept for money.  
He could have stopped on his way to the auction 
and purchased one at the bodega for half a dollar 
and not six point two mil. With the excess, 
he could have fed a school district or a senior 
center.  He probably could have purchased 
a banana plantation and eaten one every day 
for life. It was never about hunger, the way
a cigar is not always a cigar. The idea was bought 
on behalf of capitalism, its ravenous appetite 
for eating everything in its path and repackaging it, 
before selling it to a hungry public and convincing them 
there is no climate crisis; Ukraine caused its own 
invasion; or the insurrection never was an attempt 
to overthrow democracy. It is no joke   
an oligarch in-waiting ate the banana from “Comedian.” 
For the wealthy, the hoi polloi is always the butt   
of the joke. The laughter comes at our expense. 

Tom Lagasse’s poetry has appeared in Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, The Silver Birch Press poetry series, Freshwater Literary Journal, The Eunoia Review, and in numerous anthologies. He was a 2024 Artist in Residence at the Edwin Way Teale House at Trail Wood. He lives in Bristol, CT. 

MY LITTLE TYRANT

by Sergio A. Ortiz

Image source: The Onion

And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

—Donald Trump

You stopped to desire what you looked at,

you stopped to invent what you looked at,

but you were never at a standstill. 

You understood the docks, the places
where salt is a blind lady seated on your soul,
where foam gnaws at the base of everything,
with its small teeth resembling
the quicksand of what is forgotten,
the sites where old anchors and barges
of oversize engines oxidize in droppings
of seagulls and pelicans, the small white tumults
where peace and movement intertwine
their nets in the old-fashion-way of the sea,
the landscapes that surrounded you
without you knowing how far from your imagination,
your most intimate arguments could travel.

There is a sky full of vessels that eyes contemplate
from below tears, from where your gaze runs out of breath.

An eternity that anyone could say,
is worn out by extreme use, fondled by the dead,
softened by the complaints of the sick,
an afternoon that is sinking like a boat
in a landscape that belongs to nobody else but you.

You understood most of this,
you distrusted your desire, but it was your saliva
that shone on the teeth of your desire,
you were the doughy dough someone chewed
the dough that ended up in your stomach.
It was your hand, the one with which you said goodbye.

That is why you hesitated in the middle of the night,
you heard the trees get lost in their branches,
you felt the wind halt, as if in search of something
between the folds of the curtain, you heard the dead
laugh in their holes imitating moles,
you will discover oblivion, let it walk into your bedroom
dressed as a butler to announce what is already served at the table.

Unintentionally you will dine with great appetite and at the end,
leaving the napkin on the table, you will praise the menu.

Sergio A. Ortiz is a gay Puerto Rican poet and the founding editor of Undertow Tanka Review. He is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four-time Best of the Web nominee, and a 2016 Best of the Net nominee. His poems have been published in hundreds of journals and anthologies. He is currently working on his first full length collection of poems, Elephant Graveyard.