The junta was jubilant around the mortised fountain.

A solemn procession of century plants going to the bridge.

A dead chauffeur in the ditch.

  You thought

you watched a quetzal bird fly from the bursting tin

of gasoline. Nine enemies of the junta

are sprawling in the back of an open wet Mercedes.

You threw your last two paintings into the sea. Looked

for snow on the mountain.

You washed your legs and breasts in a jagged fragment

of mirrorglass. And wrote, except for the genitals

my body is seamless. I’ve changed my mind about God again.

I’m tired of the new dress. I’m ashamed

my work hangs in Princeton and New Haven.

Near the shack your Winchester kicks once—

in your line of vision the lifting hawk did not drop

for it had eclipsed a crow, your lead passed

through its dark stomach:

    the hawk banks to the left,

free falls, tucked

for one complete revolution, then wielding suddenly

onto the immaculate screw of a rising thermal,

it rose a degree or two on the horizon and made

its quick diagonal hit at the neck of the crow.

It only took a moment! You fed the chickens corn, and

threw the Winchester in the ocean.

The dead colonel in the Mercedes word his winter coat

like a cape, arms absent from the sleeve. For this

you dislike him instinctually. The newspaper talked

about the contents of his mistress’ stomach. The colonel

had made a sauteed abalone while issuing camphor and vinegar

to the city’s poor to check the typhus. Abalone, like inkfish,

needs prodigious pounding with a pine mallet scented

in garlic. The red foot of this shellfish is butchered

like a steak. When the fat reaches the point of fragrance,

cook two minutes to each side.

   Oh, yes, parsley

to clean the palate first!

You hoped you had watched a quetzal bird flit

in and out, along side the limousine,

below the green stand of cane…

a cavity

was cut deep into the colonel’s loins,

  it was

irrigating pink in the eternal spring rains…