Ex Pat

You’ve pocketed twenty canciones in the San Miguel morning, walking the cobbled streets. Wonder how they did this to the poets; sliced off hands to feed them hands, removed each foot, fed them feet. Say mantequilla, a kind of dawn on the toast. Say le odio, about your mother. The pilgrim dogs colonize los calles, even to them there’s no distinguishing basura and basurero. At the market buy a gordita. Say la comida, devour the afternoon, raisin flies sprinkled on the bodies baking on the porch. Say bolígrafo, a kind of insult, and write it down with a bolillo in your journal. You left the sol in your pants, and pick-pocketed from a crowd erupts the sudden night. Say mas, you’ll get none. Say luna and think lunatic. Say aquí and think a key shed of its doors. At the bar, piss on ice, watch the trough steam and cave in on its self. This is elegance. Say madrugada. It means nothing, a hopeless invention. Borracho, stumble home, hefted by the gazes of those perras putas prostitutas y el hambre que vive en los platos de sus ojos. When you get there and the keys don’t work, think of a home abandoned of its people. Write una traducción, a song of sorrow.