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A Brief History of the Banana

     —for Ricardo Sternberg Shaped like a bureaucratic grin It floats Unseen Past the general’s head As he sits Studying an old newsreel of Peron’s exile. Even the palace guard Daydreaming About the young girl in the marketplace Thinks it only A phallics spectre Thrown up in the mind’s eye Like The curvaceous angel The boxer…

A Few Quotations

A dramatic necessity goes deep into the nature of the sentence. Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear…

On Tour with Rita

1. Georgia Black train flying north, Rita’s hat Awfully large and with a white ribbon, Legs crossed, cheap novel in her lap, Fingers casual on a bright necklace; Someone across the aisle is snapping Newspaper pages and blowing cigar smoke— This game of American spaces is tiresome: Trains may pound paradise into honeymoons And politics,…

excerpts from El Mono Gramático

[ Translator's note: What follows is a selection of passages from E1 Mono Gramatico (literally, "The Monkey Grammarian," but not to be taken literally: to be taken freely, calling up all the puns, associations, analogies that flood our minds when we juggle mono, mono, gram-, grammar, grammarian of monads, monkish keys, graminivorous appetite for semantics…

Primero de Enero

Las puertas del año se abren, como las del lenguaje, hacia lo desconocido. Anoche me dijiste:      mañana habrá que trazar unos signos, dibujar un paisaje, tejer una trama sobre la doble página del papel y del día. Mañana habrá que inventar, de nuevo, la realidad de este mundo. Ya tarde abrí los ojos. Por el…

Just Stopping By

Who shares your room, I wish I knew. A centipede, with eyes of blue? She will not see me snooping here To count each slipper, boot and shoe. Our little dresser must think it queer To hold her panties pink and sheer. I’ll bet her ass will never quake The coldest evenings of the year….

The Chilean Singer

(In memory of Victor Jara) No! white bird you’re no dove, no sign, you are an albino pigeon shitting on skyscrapers, citizens, monuments; you’ll never sing to me of lemonade & hard cider.* They broke both his hands bone after bone after bone that, swallows once, filttered over quick strings to start the children singing;…

The Hardness Scale

Diamonds are forever so I gave you quartz which is #7 on the hardness scale and it’s hard enough to get to know anybody these days if only to scratch the surface and quartz will scratch six other mineral surfaces: it will scratch glass it will scratch gold it will even scratch your eyes out…

Spoons

Inside a tin can atop my stove with long necks and empty stares but with so much character ingrained: my wooden spoons. Honest stirrers of soup no one remembers buying you and yet you are here so effortlessly shaped I imagine wood thrown to the sea floating back—perfect— after many years. Inside the bright tin…