Chase me subway train,
Kill me with your steely eyes
I am waiting for my stop—
Really waiting to get on
And she tears me up just wafting by

There are bare feet on the floor
Attached to footless people
We stop, start, push shove
Then my toes crawl away
To find some string and a needle

I lie down on subway tracks
Somehow they leave
They carry people away
They give them new feet
But they don’t come back

Castles

You’re just tired and it shows
Each little sigh is a tiny blow
Like a wish made out of bones
Far from your father’s home
The thousand places you’ve outgrown
The million times you called me on
I’ve spent so many nights wondering oh
How your bed turned so blue
How time had never changed you
How the sun obscured the truth
How everyone is starting new
And where you had gotten to, gotten to?

You’re an animal, a monster, something I can’t describe
You’re an animal, a monster, something I want to get behind
It’s like a brigade tumbling down a cascade
Or a renegade superhero taking free days
Troubled by the hives, you can never stay alive
You’re on the run, on the run, and I know you’ve got a gun.

You’re alarmed and I know
You’re dying with every throw
Of every little stepping stone
That grew from miles below
Or from a place that he never cared to go
I suppose that’s exactly where you dared to roam
(It’s giving me some vertigo)
How I spend my nights wondering oh
How your bed turned so blue
How the night can swallow you
How quickly she withdrew
How happily she pursued
And where we had gotten to, gotten to?

Race without race

I have never competed for my race,
Or thought I had one at all;
I grew up Ecuadorian I suppose
Displaced and sort of connected
and apathetic about a theoretical home.
It comes as a surprise to see
that race sometimes counts for me.
Do I belong into a group when I don’t believe?
When I am too catholic for my religion,
Too queer about my straightness?
I am passing white, so fortunate
to have a colorful existence
to be privileged to embrace any race,
just like anyone of any race.
So should I check that box – will I be
brown enough to represent?
I stopped believing in emotions long ago,
so why should I act like they matter to you?
Is it because I know they do?
“But you don’t have a reason for that.”
“But I have a reason why that doesn’t matter.”
I am a little crazy when I run this race.
Even though I am never competing,
I am always tired, with a broken ankle, stumbling,
with not even a good word to write,
and losing.

So I told myself I’d be a runaway,
And I’d do it from time to time.
Though it’s been fifteen years since the first go at it,
I still can’t get it right.

Woke up to a girl but I was feeling alone,
I’d never been one to care,
She got up and she left without a breath,
The words slipped out of my lips there.

Wondering about my part in the world,
I lost whatever I had left,
So I walked to class and I lifted my glass,
Chasing the good times I’d had.

Pour me a story
and I’ll drink to that,
I’ve your answers and questions,
An essay I pulled from a hat.

No, I don’t think you’re the answer,
Girl, you’re not a lie,
It’s just you and me, so it’s meant to be,
Which means that I’d rather die.

Dream if you want this to be a melodrama,
Paint over the criss-crossed lines,
Call my friends Thaler, DeLillo and Stinson,
And tell them to meet me at 9.

I’m farther from home than I’ve ever been,
I’m closer to giving into the sea,
I don’t know what’s going to change anymore,
What I’d rather be.

“The test results were negative.”
“The book is in good hands now.”
“She was never going to leave you that house.”

Dizzy in my pocket. She spoke unnervingly eloquently. On 12 Serly Road, we walked out that room, my girl and I, out that detestable space, into Serly Road. Structure, structure, structure. The structure of a dream.

Awake. Tense, escaping tradition, I woke up in a sweat, her words bouncing in iambic pentameter. Shakespearean prose swam through my veins, the effects of falling in love bleeding out a conceit stitched together like a broken capillary. Upwards, of course, I pressed the button to floor 9 ¾. It made sense, like an Arabic narrative, or love in the Russian winter, like Melchizedek storming through Mos Eisley while in search of Lara. I awake again, consciousness snapping forward, the recognition of the dream that exempts you from its grasp. Then complications begin to subside.

The words relax. They loosen their thorny grip. The cup I hold as I wake up is brittle and full; the people around the table are merry for my waking up. I don’t wonder where the thirteenth hand comes from or plot a conspiracy. I am content to swim around above what I believe to be the gentle currents below. And while so many have swum far out to embrace some extraordinary unison between letters and spirit, I will leave myself content at the shore, to walk upon well-known lands in ways well-known men have never known.

I’m so far gone, I’m going blind,
Can’t see past the hate that’s on my mind,
But you say I’m just an ordinary rebel 
The type that turns out fine.

Have you seen the pain in my spine?
Broken so many times.
Have you seen my friends inside?
Hearts of darkness, hardly alive.

Armed by the ones who’ve died,
They’d cut you down before you take their rights,
They’ll come on the wave of a coup d’etat,
They’ll come (they come) to eat you up,
They’ll run with their forks and knives,
You better run for your fucking life!

And the reign of terror will seem like a pacifist’s dream,
The confusion alone will destroy all our homes,
The good boys will sing about killing disease,
The good girls will dance with my guns in their hands,
Screaming we won’t die without a fight!

The kids on the streets tonight
Are dying in the worst way,
The fire sweeps right by
And the numbers go up in flames.

The darkest light you see
Is the one you spot in me,
I gave up on letting go,
Waiting was too slow,
I light the fires at night,
Tipping the scales, I try.

I might go to hell, hell I might just as well,
I’m the coldest bastard there was
Below the slant of the damned Western sun,
The apathy inside burned out in time,
And tonight, my friend, is goodbye.

I was born included
with too much freedom.
I wanted to find words
in this (my) reconstruction
to say that I was your friend,
your lover, your soldier,
your brother.

But I  was too free
and picked this up
and I did not look back.

I took up arms to 
fight (betrayal).
I took up reading again
not to write (betrayal).
Though I had shouted and
screamed, I did not
write my history.
And those that did
betrayed me.

I have lost more since
and paid twice and
twice again
the price of too much freedom.

We are the wanderers, your tired and poor.
Filling desks unseen:
in the closed life,
agnostic aesthetics plan the plans.

The wanderers (I was once among them)
traverse across time, secret spillers.
Legion, playwright ballerinas,
so lost and disenfranchised,
they wander towards nothing, from nothing,
the makers of things made.

Swimmers

Swimming thoughts come to the surface for air,
Where they are seized, coveted and admired:
“I always thought this was extinct!”

Curious

I took it upon myself to be different today,
and so I wore a brightly colored hat.
Beneath that hat I became a man,
some charming fellow, no doubt,
but I was not him and have no recollections.
I suppose it was that yellow hat that
got me into this business with this monkey
and that girl, but such is the way things go,
I suppose,
When you start to grow old.

Así empezó, sin duda y sin compromiso allí en la calle en donde la gente desaparecen. La señorita Leira Iturralde, quien trabajaba para la CIA en el división de narcotráfico, estaba caminando bajo la protección de dos agentes. Tenía solamente unos treinta años de edad y ya a cargo de la división, después de haber interceptado veinte toneladas de cocaína en un barco yendo a los Estados Unidos. Nació en Argentina y creció en los Estados Unidos desde cuando sus padres se mudaron en 1982. Era la hora de revolución, la hora de niños desaparecidos y de adultos desanimados.

Primero, yo encontré los cuerpos de los dos agentes, Jackson Trivers y Allison Hanning, quienes habían trabajado por cinco años juntos antes de conocer a Leira. Los dos cuerpos estaban en la calle a la vista, con un punto rojo en su frente. Era tarde pero las luces en la calle iluminaban el charco de sangre que manchaba sus camisas y que pintaba sus caras. Trivers y Hanning fueron importante, pero más que nada, teníamos que encontrar a Leira. Escrito en un papel que estaba en el bolsillo de Trivers era: ≪No las vas a encontrar. Ni en el cielo, ni en el mar.≫ Sí, la señorita Leira estaba caminando por estos calles y ya no.

Leira se despertó en una cama fría bajo una colcha sucia, lleno de lagrimas, tierra y manchas de sangre. Analizó su entorno. Medía todo que podía: el cuarto era 2.5 metros de altura por 4 de ancho y 5 de largo, la puerta estaba en la esquina 3 metros de su cama. No se oía ningún voz. La bombilla estaba colgada desde el centro de la habitación. Ella se sentía muy cansada. Pensaba que si no la hubieran matado entonces ella habría sido importante para mantener vivo. Los pensamientos que no vinieron de inmediato de su formación llegaron lentamente. Era probable que la habían drogado, creyó ella. Después de lo que pasaron unas horas se dio cuenta de que tenía hambre, y que no sabía cual grupo le secuestró, y si sabían donde estaba, y si …

Segundo, busque en los papeles que estaban sobre la mesa encontré mucho. Con el permiso del gobierno, miré los websitios donde andaba Leira antes del secuestro. Vi fotos y videos y correo electrónico. Todo pasó muy despacio y yo me preocupaba por su vida más y más. Yo seguía buscando en cada carpeta de la computadora. Tal vez fue un recuerdo de una cosa que me había dicho de su breve tiempo en Argentina o tal vez fue suerte. Abrí una carpeta titulado “Corrientes.” La carpeta tenía seguros muy avanzadas pero no impenetrables. La vida de Leira, siempre envuelto en el misterio, estaba a punto desenredarse.

El día siguiente, leí todas la información en la carpeta. Leira trabajaba con ambos lados en la guerra contra los narcotraficantes. En 2003, cuando había hecho su gran descubrimiento del cargo en el barco, ella había mandado un correo electrónico a Carlos Ramas, el cual es un sobrino de Pablo Escobar, para notificarle del descubrimiento. Ramas respondió, ≪Bueno. Los demás tienen azúcar. Asegúrese de que no analizan los paquetes marcados con una etiqueta amarillo. Ojala que asciendas con esto. Estamos tomando un gran riesgo contigo. No nos falle.≫

En el cuarto sucio, Leira esperaba ver sus secuestradores y amigos, Ramón y San Pedro. Todo salió más o menos conforme a sus planes. Tenía más hambre. El reloj en la pared de que ella no se había dado cuenta le dijo que eran las cuatro. No sabía si fuera de la mañana o de la noche. Entró un hombre al cuarto, mirando a ella. Leira no le conoció. Por primera vez empezó dudar que estos fueron sus amigos del FARC. El plan era permitirla desaparecer para usar su información de la CIA y para no estar viviendo como traicionera con la posibilidad de ir a la cárcel. Pero no deberían haberla drogado. El secuestro no iba ser cuando estaban presente Trivers y Hanning. Los hechos no tenían sentido. Cuando vino el hombre, no mostrando comida sino puntando un pistola en su cara, ella sabía que estos tipos no eran ni del FARC ni de la CIA. Se levantó con la agilidad de una mujer de veinte años. Ella sabía que sabía demasiado. Por eso no la mataron. La droga ya paró de afectarla. Sus pensamientos tenían claridad. Miró a su secuestrador, memorizando su rostro como si le pudiera parar de hacer lo inevitable. Miró al cielo, a tiempos pasados, a horas desapareciendo dentro de otras horas tras la espalda de un reloj antiguo en donde la gente se pueda escapar y en donde nunca le llega su hora. Empezaron las preguntas.