The windows of this house were boarded up, sealed shut, I look at the sidewalk out front, walk by, and stop to take photos. Darkness and abandonment, an armored past. I go to the dentist on Montevideo Street, I run my tongue over my teeth, I check that I’ve brushed them well before I leave After leaving the partner and the computer at home, the child waves goodbye Singing and inside at a distance of three blocks and half an hour, light shaking movements, clear laughter of gums like rosebuds.
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At home they told me to wash my face thoroughly, your mouth is such that if it is not cleaned it will burn or it will keep spreading dirt. Trajan and Troido, loud-mouthed, bursting with abuses or lies, and the lie was a blatant lie. An asceticism runs through a dictionary that is not fixed in kinship, we speak where we grew up, but also with our ears open like butterflies.
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Giles is where the world’s naming conventions entered: Francesca says Lagras instead of Longs, I use that; Nádes Pelía also adopted the hand gesture that says sentences in Gaucho.
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I love appropriating language until strangers ask what you mean. For those of us who expand our palates, we are often tempted to talk with our own vocabulary: Don’t be Truhana, the talk between us, a harmless intimacy that spreads like mycelium among our roots.
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Appearance on bodies: Ancidas, Percheronus, Mastodon. The people they are talking about: reanimated lice, unhappy people who have a dog but live like rats, strong people, carmencitas, people of Chopan, people of Sarces. Like Jujuying secretly. Pet the dog, beat until you burst. Living in the pigsty for not cleaning the house, changing things in naming, controlling anger, being gentle, meek, rebellious The language always says, even from behind, “little girl.” Then, to say things stay the same way at the same time, in the tone of things, a picture that runs through the tones. Friends, let’s talk about fifteen.
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Don’t blow your bones, the endless crunching that began in the second vertebra of the second skeleton. A series of internal explosions: My daughter’s neck is broken, my mother. Other clicks that I didn’t know about before. The bird rotates the seeds with its beak. A swarm of contractions, a migraine galloping across the temples, a physical language of dazzling brightness that still sinks you into a well, like being at the bottom of water. I am green. One mother never swam, she only wet one part of her body. A father crossed the river. Children’s arms are limited in stroke extension. I kick with my tongue. A
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My grandmother’s lullaby: Kaachan Kaachan. Singer’s rattle. My aunt’s heels. Neighbor’s tamango. Comanche Indian face. You don’t have to pretend to be holy, what a lazy thing that was, a scam. You want the ring to come off too, the manly question is breaking the new body. How we stand in front of the mirror later. Crooked septum. Wide face. Chacha Kan. The body starts again through the tongue.
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