We were finally there,
the last of the untamed ground,
the cracked park-bench at the bend
in the creek I lost Paradise,
wiping wetness from my lip:
wetness from my lip:
                                                                        Latin men should not kiss like the French
                                                “soy una buena chica”

      Pele herself had not yet
set up shop, those rumblings
in the underworld,
tiny hotspots
filled with cheap beer,
fogged up windows.

But his breath was magnetic,
and she shook the ground a bit—
a little tectotechnotectic dance
of hope for me yet.

She believed in sonar,
those waves below the surface

of things

the soft, hot core of magnetite

in my heart

his seismic wonder
the drift of continents southward
                                                          a los aires Buenos

filled with clove smokes and vodka-
laced raspberry gelatin
on a yellow bus.

He must have waited in his dormitorio,
still wearing that jersey.
I rode home,
my obnoxious teenage friends
driving along

the faultlines

     Pele steamed below, cursing
my virtue
St. Philomena of the Lost Cause.

Then, Pele, snapping her fingers,
closed up the gates of Aremus
deep below the sea,

those untouched places
                                                        lugares desconocidos
His musk and wonder,
gaucho making rhythms
with his feet
tectotechno

he was son of fertile soil caught
beneath my fingernails
by that bend in the creek.

Artemis was granted her
“habitus operativus bonus”
eternal virgin of the hunt
like a praying mantis
on a green leaf, hungry

for more

St. Philomena
faith, hope, and charity
the virtues of
una chica Buena
smelling of soil and musk
walking quietly above sealevel
dreaming
what could have come next?
                                                                        sueños de los ojos morenos