from Places You Leave
Your dog takes a shit outside Hotel Presidente.

Someone else always cleans up for the State

and it’s not Alsina, busted, Socratic, his hand

remonstrating with a balding, white sky. They

rake green shoots into a pile on LIBERTAD,

a cosmetic gesture to the funerary traffic

on Avenida 9 de Julio, the largest boulevard

in the world. You film your dog in a series

of selfies cascading through the park. Abilio

roll over [click], Abilio squatting for a piss

on the lower branches by the hissing fountain

[click]. Snapchat over the traffic snaking west.

You feel yourself part of the continuum going

nowhere in the coolness of a Jacaranda’s quiver.
Who was it fleecing the workers’ pockets but you?

Each day opens and closes like a clockwork petal.

Even the air locks everybody in. Today is another

national holiday: warm rain soaks up the workers’

protest, where you pass by tapping your wallet,

looking down at the young man who lost his father

in the cyanide mines at Valdero. What can you say

when your eyes are spreadsheets, counting out

the world in ounces of gold. ‘Lo Siento’ you mutter

when the Pepsico workers approach, not meaning

I feel or feel sorry, but the formality of ‘Déjame

Pasar’. And you pass. Dream of a hacksaw factory.

Even Marx backed away when he saw the flags

of free capitalism. All those numberless offices.
PAN Y TRABAJO reads the sign. PAN Y TRABAJO.

When a canvas didn’t sell he drank the oils.

Turn away into Pettoruti’s La Plata. They call

you a foreigner but what does the word really

mean? Look away now and again. Solar’s smoke

-river. Spilimbergo’s louche terrace: the world

floats through rocks like memories (but whose?).

Commotional billboards blur and set the cars

honking. Tamayo’s soldiers wear shells for eyes.

Your everyday uniqueness and vertical sequencing

unimpresses Lam’s balloon skull; its eyes look

away from you towards a tablecloth covered in

unshakeable dust. Carry your tears in a wet sack,

worn heavy. Until the retina starts to shriek.
Lightcrawlers. Monsters in the bestiary. Games of

love or mischance. You count your casino chips

on the side of a dice. Peel away yesterday’s lover

from the tattooed map of your body. What you want

to call temptation can be renamed Ambition’s Grotto,

Encounters Unease. Turn Aryan devils into saints,

rise above a city counting out your bank balance.

Rattle your new coupe keys in the exhaust, ex-

hausted, wheeze through a cloud of cognac, disc

cells contracting the rotunda of your body. Morning,

your skin ruddied, reduced to buying up the sellabilities

of image. So much distance between victory and victim,

you think (how to translate this for the boardroom?)

When you die they’ll cut the film from your eyes.
The voyeur twiddles you as if by puppet string.

In Figari’s Candombe o Candombe de carnaval,

a pink-shirted man shakes open his hands to

question a gallery of masked faces in windows.

Chevron ¬– Swastika. A General, skeletally x-rayed.

Another morning when the waffle-haired president

reminds us how we met Hitler. As you would say,

sometimes it’s all just too much. How to embody

hope? Chagall painted dreams to save the world

from itself. My hands run over yours, lean in through

the remoteness of trees to fire a kiss. Because what

else is love but the world opening in your eyes, open.

Morose beauty of a horses’ eye, sad but knowing.

Stay close, take cover, safe in this mirage of mist. 
Today, walking in the scent of love’s blood.

Tomorrow, casted in Alonso’s ‘Carne de Primera’.

‘It’s not just in Mexico, women go missing here,

you don’t hear about it on the news.’ A business-

man smokes his cigar and the elsewhere of his eyes

suggest: I am counting you up as a number: 622

by the leg, 729 by the arm. I live out my violence,

from the entrails of a ranch, from the hanging

of a meathook. The oligarchy are Bacon-faced,

digging another anonymous grave at the roadside.

A lost child runs through doors of broken glass.

You edit yourself in and out, as Mayakovsky

advised. It’s a form of self-dentistry, he said, just

to survive. A gloved hand props open your throat.
Without bread but with work. Weeks caption

the stillness of a blue table. Nothing devastates

more than a child dangling an empty spoon.

Stray bloodfleck on black-backed curtains.

Monday: volcanic as the sun. You remember

Christmas 1990, your mother serving chicken

instead of turkey. Am-Dram pretence of knives,

but she ate none. Outside the window, a swab

of musketeering soldiers on the charge raise

the sword of war. Death breathes through the cut-

glass wetness of your eyes (but for what, what?)

A child’s belly, soiled, the bills yet to be paid.

Whoever paints this is the repo man at the door.

The father looks to the mother who looks at you.