The truth is none of our business.
Our adolescent eye-at-the-keyhole rooting
In a sweetheart’s soiled linen for a clue

“For a few years, I managed to eke out
       a meagre living as The Human Yo-Yo.”
But I tired of the unnatural activity,

The masts are mostly gone, Walt. Pleasure-sailors
ply the harbor, piloting fiberglass forty-footers
down from the North Shore, one at the wheel,

Here are the parrots, she says, which Mayor Washington,
the Mayor of Chicago,
in that apartment on Lake Michigan

My Daddy slapped my hand against my cheek.
“Don’t hit yourself. Why are you hitting yourself?”
He held my wrists, and laughed. I cried. My hands,

One night in Portugal, alone in a forlorn
village at twilight, escaping her parents,
she saw a full moon baptized on the water

You will not discover in my dying body’s kidneys’ yield, who.
All your theory of that and the other is false. Nor is any
woman simple. We encompass men before they’re birthed

I have forgotten my name. I am not Borges
(Borges died at La Verde, under fire)
Nor am I Acevedo, dreaming of battle,

    Lack-luster      We told them these were our “long, empty
     friends and     hours” and that we’d nap or primp,
acquaintances     but instead we rose to all the trappings

Into Miami at night then out over gulf island and jungle

We had traveled so fast that we arrived
on the right bank of the RÍo de la Plata