We’d seen the signs at the border
post: persona perdida, Irlandes, 28,
ingenero, amable; ojos
azules; someone had heard you’d been
killed in a puma attack, that only
your glasses remained, others heard you
were found alive in El Calafate, in a hostel
drinking beer

My tent walls flapped their way
to an early dawn; the sun hovered
over the Torres del Paine, over the clink
and rattle of campers cooking, striking,
setting out over that same path
that was your last

Up the sandy traverse, up the windblown
narrow trails I walked not knowing
that you’d walked them, that
your shadow almost lingered still
over the same rocks I climbed; I held
the worn trees for support, scurried
over boulders unaware
that you’d slipped into a crevasse
below, blown your last breath
into the mighty wind

BRUNYBRUNYBRUNY
Jorge is Spanish and his Sses sound
like THs; everyone in town
knows he is a bit different, but,
he says, they are all a bit
different; that’s how you come to live
at the end of the road.

Bruny is short for Brunhilda and she runs
the mini-mercado that her ex-husband
built for her; it has a dozen shelves
and a cooler, little boxes
in the corner: duraznos, papas,
cebollas; sometimes there are tomatoes,
but not now –

She sleeps in back
and when his house is full
Jorge sleeps there too; the wind howls
through her plexiglass windows, blows
a thousand tiny receipts to the floor; Jorge
is building a new store for her
but it isn’t ready yet;

Bruny is angry and now she isn’t free
for the night anymore; she’s tomando algo
with Hans who runs the only boat across
Lago O’Higgins; Jorge shrugs and cooks
Spaghetti Bolognese

JORGEJORGEJORGE
Bruny wants to know where he is
and why he hasn’t come to apologize;
She is angling for that last explosive
moment of the fight; He smiles:
she is difficult

On the corner two lovers coo
on a bench of logs. She leans
toward him awkwardly,
curls up and recoils as he
bear-hugs her; she puts her knees
up, giggles and casts her eyes
toward him

A dog noses its way
into Sofia’s Resturante
y Comidas Rápidas and is quickly
rebuffed; roosters crow; has the day
begun or will the lingering clouds
delay the day until
mañana?

A carabinero walks by, steady
stance, steady glance, gun holstered
at his side; he returns with a young boy
and they share a liter of Coke Light

For the price of two liters of Coke Light
you can stay the night in the hospedaje
behind me, which is also the mail
stop, resturante, terminal
de autobuses

The clouds spit rain, part
occasionally to reveal a snowcapped
peak, while off the lake the wind
blows a plastic bag full of air, tosses it along
the dusty road

I suppose I had been naive
to expect that verse
might be liquid there, crashing
on the black shore; but there
was only a pile of junk
that one man loved, a snack
bar and cameras recording
collections, bathroom tiles,
the stones atop your mortal
remains.

We are stopped and we aren’t moving
until we replace the broken part whose name
I don’t understand, but isn’t it all really
inconsequential anyhow, the name,
the laughter, the ire of the woman?

But none of it is inconsequential
to Ana in the row across from me;
she has to work in the morning, tells me
that her boss won’t let her be late and Jesus,
is it too much to ask for a little sleep and a bus
that arrives on time?

Eventually the bus whines its way
uphill, the lights go out, the laughter fades
to snoring; I wipe the steam from my window
and watch the Andes pass like giants
in the moonlight. A moth is stuck
to the window and occasionally it frees
a wing and in its fluttering to free the other
sticks again.

The border sits atop the pass and we wait
in lines until dawn; salida, entrada,
inspeción de aduana. I stand with Ana
as she smokes and we talk about
our travels, how she likes my sandals,
wishes she had bought a pair like them
instead of the two cartons
of cigarettes: malditos
cigarillos.

We re-board the bus at daybreak
and next to me the moth is hopelessly
stuck; it struggles less and less, finally stops
as sunlight glints over the horizon, as Aconcagua
thrusts herself into view.

no hay
problema, still the silence
stumbles
between us;

but soon he tells me
about his daughter,
how she is learning English,
how she teaches him a word
or two; I ask about the thunderstorm
the night before, relámpago and, how
do you say it, when pieces of ice
fall from the sky?
Cayeron
piedras.

Luis drops me
at the vineyard, waits
as I tour the grounds, waits
as I walk through rows of Malbec
with Guillermo;

The grapes are shriveled,
Guillermo’s sadness is palpable. ¿Cayeron
piedras?

sí, he stumbles, hace
dos semanas; we drink fresh water
from an irrigation ditch, look back
across the fields: que tristeza; todo
muerto ya. His sigh rattles
in his throat;

Luis is waiting and he drives me
back to Mendoza; Lodi scratches its way
out of the radio and Luis wants to know
the words and what they mean;
I translate as he moves his head
to the beat; we sing with fervor: oh Lord,
stuck in Lodi again.

Brasil meets me at the gate, he does not ask
if I need a room. He takes my backpack and walks
silently up the stairs; He points to a bed
in a laundry-strung dorm:
eight reals.
He sets my backpack down.

He speaks
broken English and I
little Portuguese so we circle, approximate
conversation until, uh, u
sehnor falla espanhol?

Sim!

I need an ATM. I have no reals.
Brasil has a red truck with doors that stick
and he drives me around the sleeping city
looking for the Plus logo; He points out the bus
for the border: ¿lo ves? FRONTIERA
and a good resturante, open late.

I share the room with five others; we queue
for the shower and fall one by one
into sagging twin beds covered
in a pair of sheets only. But it is too hot
for even sheets, too hot to sleep.
A pair of wobbly ceiling fans
whine like jet engines. Boa noite.
boa noite.

The morning sun casts shadows behind the peels
of paint, reveals the haphazard course of the ceiling
fan blades. The house is littered with dusty
sofas, carved parrots, remnants of grandeur.

The bathroom mirror is black except
the very center which reveals the bright
gleam of my sweaty face and suddenly
I see in my place Miss Primrose, my first
grade teacher, her tightly-wound bun,
her complexion so shiny that it appeared
perpetually wet and how I would try
to emulate her, splashing bathwater
on my face.

I wonder where she is now, did she marry,
did her shiny smoothness crease?
It is funny, the undulation of memory,
how and when we remember people.
In three days I will see Brasil again
and for a moment I won’t recognize him.

The back is packed with puppies, people,
among them two Bolivian hipsters in faux
Adidas tracksuits, big, glamorous shades.
They pose melodramatically, whistle at the ladies
through the window glass.

We climb collectively out of La Paz; a sign
that reads Copacabana in Old English
script is propped against the windshield, held by a roll
of papel higénico, always pink here.

We level off in El Alto, careen through
a potholed market, lleno de gente, swimming
in gente, and they are selling flowers, food,
blankets hecho del arco iris,
encendedores, camisetas, baterí­as —

The mass of people fades; a boy in a ski mask
digs dirt into a pothole half his height, holds out
his hand as we pass. The driver gives him
a Boliviano, gracias
gracias.

We pass through farms where bright-skirted
ladies carry blanketsfull of grasses
on their backs; we follow the shores
of the sacred lake and at Tiquina, leave the bus
for an overloaded boat to the opposite shore:
yellow, green and red, she teeters, leaks,
but does not sink,
esta vez.

We rejoin our bus, wind uphill
and down, around wild
corners where suddenly squares
are cut out of asphalt, ¡Cuidado! Hombres
Trabajando, but nobody slows down, there are no
hombres, nadie está trabajando; we swerve
past autobuses, camiones, Corollas, crosses
covered in flowers.

It is easy
from her sunken eyes
to tell he isn’t all
she cracks him up to be;
she conceals the bruises:
long sleeves in summer,
a swipe of foundation,
excuses,

to fool no one;

she is unhappy
and tells me so daily, wants
something better, whatever it is
but her constitution wavers.

One if by land,
two if by sea
I’ll race in to warn her,
I’ll dump out the tea
I’ll strangle the bastard
to set the girl free;

but we have been here before,
and when night fades to daylight,
when the wounds are cleaned
her suitcase fills with fear,
her days fill with indirection;
and the shadow of him within her
falls over her again, and again
she will find him
capitulate, comply;

I would give her, if I could,
liberation on a platter,
a towel for her bloodied cheek,
safety; but I cannot help her
any more than I can free a butterfly
from the confines of its chrysalis;

I can only hope the gentle breeze
will lift her, speed her on her way,
but stunted, sticky-winged, she trundles on.

from a tangle of constellations
emanates the individual kiss, a single
star to eclipse the night sky,
a single star receding
in the darkness; replaced by another,
brighter, indistinguishable;

I must wonder if I am no more
than a moth, devoid of logic, drawn
powerless into the most radiant light,
the incessant danger of flame;
but there is little point in pondering
what I know already
so I kiss you again
and again;

the bright spots that are your eyes
sliver in the darkness and I suppose
I am trying to ascertain whether,
in an unsuspecting moment, they will turn
to burn me clean through;

the night closes in, language emerges
disheveled; The rider has already
become the horse, the horse is drawn
and quartered into the four great chambers
of the bear’s bright heart, burning;

Measurement fails, magnitude fools;
seconds of arc fold into a five-thousand year orbit
and the stars that would be one
spin together
in distant proximity