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Confession of the Bolivian Who Slept
on Train Station Floors
�in
translation
after Magritte's "The Menaced Assassin"
When I climbed out of her mouth, bloody
with darkness, the record was still spinning,
the needle stuck on a troubadour's croon,
"You are so, you are so." Over the floor,
frozen as an arctic railyard, fell shadows
long as a hair left on her borrowed coat.
Who waited in bowlers for the vendor
to open shop and let news happen in ink
as the littered shadows of passengers
leapt and bent like fish fighting a river,
found the corners of windswept melee
as snakes bred in folds of the mountain?
I'm lying. I smoothed the divan, undressed her
knee by knee. A feather on the pillow,
echoes in the wall. A net holds fear.
We flee from love in the garb of mourners.
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