_______
ONE.
I have lived with many
powerful and angry lovers
who no longer exist.
I wish they had called down
a sticky madness
to soak my nerves
and fasten my feet to the floor,
or a chemical attack
to unravel my senses
so that I may tell the truth in this.
In 2006, I was a starving poet living in the Congreso neighborhood of Buenos Aires. There, eight blocks east of the corner of Entre Ríos and Avenida de Mayo, where Argentina’s political and economic turmoil was evidenced by hapless street vendors selling stolen produce from the back of their cars; where 9 year olds, like looters picking wallets from dead soldiers, harvested glass Quilmes bottles from garbage cans that lined the street; where even stray dogs, forced by survival to eat feces from backed-up drainage gutters, felt the clench of a half-century-old poverty; there, at 345 Avenida Rincón I had an apartment with a killer view. And a lettuce crisper.
I was roughing it like only a gringo could do in a country with a 3 to 1 exchange rate. And there, in a 5th floor apartment with wifi, living with my wanderlusty friend Shalee, I began and ended my embarrassing tenure as a writer of poetry. What you see above, painstakingly formatted to look like better poetry than it is, should be some indication of the quality of work I produced in this dark time. I have yet to decide if, in writing this now, I am punishing myself (or only you) or just exercising sound economics in its use, (the poetry, that is). I suppose we’ll find the answer together, you and I, while you read, and I type until the guilt evaporates, leaving me a more blameless writer.
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