Giannina Braschi

Yo-Yo Boing!

I. Close-Up

She starts on all fours crawling like a child, but she is a wild animal with a great big trunk, an elephant. And little by little, her neck starts popping, and little by little, her neck starts growing, one inch, then two inches, then five inches, until her head inches its way so far up that she’d almost swear it hits the ceiling, she’d almost swear it has grown so big and so fast that it can’t fit inside the house anymore. And then it dawns on her that what has grown is not her head but her neck, which means that she must be a giraffe. Then she starts hunching over, the bones in her hands and feet start crackling, there is a rumbling throughout her body, bombs exploding, fireworks, thunder, lightning, throbbing, and she tries in vain to allay the uprising. She feels like spreading her cheeks like a ham and cheese sandwich, opening wide, releasing that other part of her body inside, those brown pebbles which are sometimes pleasant and sometimes prolonged, which are sometimes nearly melted inside and out, which are big and round and green, which are her pets, her poohs, her lil’ poopsie-woopsies, and the yellow waters melting and plunging with them into the bowl, smelling of that other smell, violently sour, enticingly foul like budding buds and violets. She wanted to feel the cascade of her black blood, her body’s dead blood, and she wanted to bathe in all of the blood of the death of her youth. She felt the urge to sit on the throne, to squat and pull down her pantyhose, which doubled as a girdle, and then her panties, which were so tight she could barely breathe. She wanted to breathe freely, unfasten her bra, scratch and stroke her itching breasts, fondle her nipples in front of the mirror, turn sideways to see her nose looking hooked and humped like a scorpion, a hairy spider, she wanted to become the hairy spider she was and scratch the itch like she was picking a berry, one of those pimples that look like a pox, and see the blood spurt and suck it like a vampire, then burrow into her crotch where the hairy waves tangle into curly knots and see the layer of crust and smell the sweet smell of coffee skim, sugar crust, and sleep on one of her blisters and milk its frothy clear nectar and feel the endless pleasure of it bursting and explore all her little nooks and crannies until she was empty, hollow, and broken. She noticed a little scab on her knee. The top was dry. She could either yank it off and let it bleed or peel it back like a Band-Aid and see another layer of skin under the first, not tanned, but musty and pink. First she acted like she wasn’t interested, then started tracing its outline, caressing, charming, and wooing it with her fingertips, rousing a vibration, a rich metallic sound, and it looked like it wanted to leave the knee for the hand that played it like a guitar, yes, they made music together, drew blood, yellow waters, it started reaching out to the hand, unraveling itself from the knee while the fingertips seduced it, the nails flayed it off the kneecap, and though the scab was uprooted, bloody, and sore, it posed like the beloved maiden in the palm of her hand where it was caressed again, adored by her eyes, yearned by her saliva, suckled by her tongue, momentarily teased by her lightning desire. After having sucked and nibbled and kneaded it, she spit it out, stepped on it with her big toe, then picked it up and flicked it in the sink. She

turned on the faucet and flushed it down the drain. Detached from her roots and whims, she restlessly searched for another star, another match to light a fire under her kettle of yearnings, a concrete, objective goal, a grain of sand to roll between her fingertips, a warm bread crumb where she could stop to think for a moment or sleep in the tenderness of what she touches. In doing so, somewhat obsessively, her breathing began to sound like the breathing of a wary animal, and its caution, deliberately slow and deep, began to sound like the breathing of a surgeon about to make the first incision. She gently placed the bloody wound in her mouth, the blister’s sheath in her mouth, and played with all the different textures she found on her body — the snot and crud from her eyes were her dolls and toys — and she played hide-and-seek and stuck them to different parts of her body like a stamp collector, all while listening to slow and deliberate music, while feeling some deep desire to push out, to breathe in, to breathe out, in and out, in and out. There she was excavating a cave with the knuckles of her forefingers pressing against a hole, when slowly out wriggled the profile of a white worm. She pressed her knuckles harder against the irritated skin once more, twice more until a blackhead emerged. Nice start, but there was much more lava bubbling inside. Another squeeze, a little pus and blood, the volcano erupting, but it wasn’t the blood she was after, no, blood alone wouldn’t do it, all the pus had to be drained, the pollen, the whole worm had to come out, alive and kicking. The first attempt was too abrupt. She had to steady the squeeze, hold the pressure, smother the little hole, suffocate it, bust it open, spread it wide, leave it empty — empty of water, thorn, and blood — shiny and clean. Having spread its legs, it was cornered and kicking on one side of the pore where it defended its cavern which was attacked from all sides by cannons and rifles, but the more it was attacked, the more it resisted, burrowing deeper and deeper into the walls of the pore, showing no sign it would ever surrender or accept defeat. It had become part of her flesh, it had lived in plenty of other pores around the wings of her nostrils and had sealed them all with blackheads, but it was only here, in this little hole, that it had felt at home — yes, it was a cave-dwelling nomad, but right here, in this little hole, it had settled down, incognito. It had tried to keep a low profile, having learned its lesson from other places, having been ousted for wanting to shine, bright and sunny, for pretending to be a thorn, for being light, but now it was hiding its crest, hiding its misery, its bitterness. At first she thought it was a mole until she noticed the edge, the crest, and squeezed it furiously because she had been fooled. She wet the open pore with some water. This time it won’t get away. She would force it out against its will with her firm and steady fists. It would have to come out with its hands up; it would have to surrender its wounds, bulges, bags, and all its goods. And so it did. Out came its neck, then its hands, its legs, the belly was enormous, gigantic, it was perfect, plackity, plackity, plack, plack, plack, that’s how it emerged and surrendered itself whole, looking shiny and greasy on the swollen tip of her nose. There it was, bug-eyed and nosy, probably trying to snoop on the blackhead, it puffed itself up, it looked like a fly, yes, like a fly about to fly. It crawled around the circumference of the dimple like a tick, and ate meat, and was swarmed by ants, speckles of freckles, as we all know — wherever you find meat, you find pesky critters. She looked closer, oh, yes, it’s you, a queer bug, queer indeed. How d’ya pick it up? She

loosened it with her finger. It danced on her fingertip like a cricket or a grasshopper, zigzagging, wigwagging its tail-end, zaggling, waggling like a piece of wire, like a piece of white string, acting out its joie de vivre, its lust for life. As she paused upon her captive, her mouth began to water. It was her tongue rather than her teeth or lips that wanted it most. And what for? To pass it along so that the palate could taste the pleasure of taking a guest and keeping it captive, and then after napping on the silver bed of a molar for a second, or a few days, why not tease it some more, start a riot, make a funny face, or have an orgy, sure, why not get it rip-roaring drunk and then make it vanish. Bottoms up. Down the hatch. Want some more? Well, help yourself. Now’s the chance. Her mouth is open. It’s now or never. You’ve got to act fast. You’ve got to find the first little crack and peep through the gap and squeeze yourself through, yes, jump right in there, between her two front teeth. C’mon, hurry, hurry, you’ve got to hurry, it’s a golden opportunity, a once in a lifetime chance, you’ve got to hurry and slide down her nose, bypass her tonsils, and say hello palate — good morning, tongue, excuse me, molar, yummy gobber is passing through — quickly, yes, run and run as fast as you can and push your way through, swing from her tonsils, bounce off her palate, and land behind her two front teeth, push your way through, squeeze between the gap, and hoist yourself onto the front tooth, yes, the one on the right. What a riot! Though she searched and searched and couldn’t find you, she laughed and found her dimple instead, open and naked with its shameless grin. Hey, sweetie, look at me. She looked at the cabinet mirror and saw three little hairs on her chinny, chin, chin. She took a pointy pair of tweezers out of her makeup bag and tried to pluck the first little hair. Impossible, it was newly born, smaller than a zit and far from ready yet. She went after the second little hair with another pair of tweezers that were squared at the tip. Harried and obsessed, she quickly sized it up from the corner of her eye and plucked it out with one swift pluck. She returned to the first the little hair and plucked and plucked and plucked until she finally plucked it out. She traced her jawline and yes, there was peach fuzz, as well as scanty pricks, and though they had no thorny tips, they stood out in the sunlight ugly and thick, and so, she uprooted them one by one using a magnifier and the tweezers that were squared at the tip. Then she ran her fingers underneath her chin searching for the last prickly-pear, the third little hair. Three smart tugs. No such luck. She switched back to the pointy pair, firmed her grip, grabbed the third little hair by the head, and yanked it out. Root and all. Now her chin felt flat and smooth like an iron, and she felt happy and soothed. Then she began browsing her jaw for pimples to pop, but found only dark marks of the pimples she had already popped. Her bare face was full of little pliers and wires, nooks and holes, warts and moles. She needed base to cover these dreary blemishes, these daily woes. She dabbed some drops of Doré on her forehead, letting it dribble a bit, before dabbing some more on the tip of her nose and gliding it down the wings with her forefinger, covering holes and dashing Souci on her cheeks, she started spinning, smearing and encircling her flushed cheeks, skating in concentric circles, and sliding her greasy fingertips over little lumpy bumps, shooting comets and bullets, and gliding them back over the nose as if they were trapezists or tumblers. Crossing a catwalk of memories, memories that breeze by, quickly regarded, as swiftly as a train leaving behind town after town in the blink

of an eye, journey and remembrance, staring out the window at grazing animals, batting eyelashes, and dimples. She smoothed the base into her forehead, allowing it to blend into her temples, and then gave an orange, green, and violet expression to her eyes. The eyeliner flowed across her eyelids, startled eggshell, yellow yolk, and started spitting and shining and doodling little blossoms. She opened the dusty blush-on, huffed and puffed on it, then wiped its mirror with Kleenex. She didn’t see her turtleneck, pug nose, or open pores. As she turned sideways, her nose blocked the view of the bags under her eyes, but not the blinking of her lashes. She lowered the mirror to see her dry lips, which she moistened with the tip of Nimphea. She chose Bloonight from the cabinet, as well as a round hand mirror to magnify the dimensions of her complex, perplexed misfortunes. She saw ticks and roaches and sank in the terrifying panic of her pain. She flipped the hand mirror over and once again contemplated the surface of the landscape and the geography of her continent. She coated her lashes with Bloonight, which was sputtering at the mouth, and as she was batting her lashes, the mascara brush hit her eyeball, causing a furious flutter and a long, thick crocodile tear, salty and black. She drew a cover stick over the bags under her eyes to mask the stain, blinked again, and powdered her face with a powder puff like an eraser on a chalkboard. A clown. All painted up in white, with two dark shadows over her eyes, and two plums on her cheeks, and her lips, wet and ready to kiss a cherry, were puckered and painted in blood-red wax. And down her temples flowed two streams, two long streaks of sweat that lingered in the wrinkles, not wrinkles quietly settled by age, but wrinkles quickly etched by the emotion of her eyes, by the furrows that furrowed and drained into her mouth where they melted on her tongue and vanished beyond the knot in her throat. It was mesmerizing to watch how the lashes resembled the blustering of an autumn tree trying to balance its branches, how the leaves were falling, blinking leafy and startled, how the windows of the skin opened to breathe, and how the pores absorbed the makeup that was melting like a candle in a candlestick, and how the illusion was darkening, and how the powder, in trying to hide the caves and thorns, made them even more noticeable, and how the cold transparency shone through and how it warmed and thawed in the flames, and how the same lights and shadows and the dance of lights and shadows were playing havoc on the neck, while the skin was sucking the succulent juice of the grease, and one wondered whether it was the grease that came from within, maybe from deep within, or whether it was the cream from the makeup, or whether it was a combination of both, with the dusty, crusty blush-on and the dry, chapped lips, having used all the lipstick, and even when she wouldn’t remove any of these face paints, when her face had already become the mask it was, when she could no longer rid herself of the magical spell of her sweat, and the furrows and reefs where the currents of her tears flowed, and the smile and stretch of her squinting eyes and the wrinkling of her smooth expression, cooked, uncooked in its crucifixion were sculpted into caterpillars, warts, turtles, spiders, hunch-backs, tattoos, in markings that no longer grow, or if they grow, they only grow old, but at least they don’t crawl backwards like crabs; instead, they persist in prolonging themselves, in opening themselves wider, in extending their movement and growth until paralyzed in high maturation toward the death of youth, and the ear of a wrinkle listens to the

sound of a seashell, and one wonders whether they will ever be warts or moles or wrinkles again. Oh, mirror, mirror, on the wall, shattering into so many faces, which is the realest of them all, which always lies, which fears it’s not the call of death, which is too real, but the very death that is reality and won’t swallow lies or mask itself in makeup. She turned on a little green bulb, spotlighting her left side. As the light spread across her face, she closed her eyes slowly and strained to open them again. Reflected was the displeasure of seeing herself sideways, half in darkness, deformed, not only by the light, but also by the disharmony she felt in her eyes and crooked mouth. She searched the surface of her face for the cause of her displeasure. She figured it was a fixation, just a peeve that made her see herself this way; if she had some distance from the reflection, she would have liked being herself, yes, maybe that was it, that she was tired of seeing herself confined to the loneliness of her own face. And if that weren’t so, then how was it that others found her attractive? How could they, unless they saw her differently than she saw herself? She thought about the tone of her voice, so shrill when she screamed, when she didn’t know why or how she became so enraged with a rage that sent tremors through her jaws, hardened her gullet, and scorched her throat. She thought about all the times she knew exactly how she wanted her hair to look but no matter how she combed it, it did whatever the hell it wanted. But what bothered and baffled her, truly baffled her and set her beside herself, was the desire to see herself as others saw her. She wanted to know what they were thinking of her, and if they kept what they were thinking to themselves, and if they were thinking something different than what they were saying, and why was her face, and not only hers, but everyone who looks at herself, a high cement wall, so impenetrable, so truly impenetrable, mysterious and silent. Why were they at war in her face, the greasy buildup, the shiny crocodile tears, and the daunting bags under her sleepless eyes? And she heard within herself, throughout herself, in a muted stillness forming a shore in her face, shores of thoughts, not thoughts buried in a tomb of an alarm clock, not thoughts barred in a coffin with padlocks, but those wrinkles that flourish and blossom, those subways heading downward from the tip of the nose, toward the half-open mouth, because they were puckered and marked and cooked, they were the ruminations of the face with the face, the encounter between the interrogator and the interrogated, between the trench and the ditch. As the film, awash with stains, was developing in the sunlight, as she was revealing herself at this very moment, as if she were veiled in white, as she was appearing, never the same in the changing movement since the first toboggan ride down her side, she wanted to free herself from herself and from all her thoughts. She wanted to reflect without them behind her forcing the way. When her eyes were focused on a fixed point and she began to project all kinds of images on the screen of her forehead, it was almost always after spending a night far away from her yearnings, her desires, when they returned eager to appear on screen. And they almost always came light, soft, not rough, like a waterfall, like cheerful solace, refreshing her face and allowing her eyes to recover the first illusion. Indeed, her eyes clouded and cried with childish excitement, and while the music played on the stereo, she started speaking with the images that suddenly appeared, bubbling, easy, uninterrupted,

with no short circuit of communication, as it was impossible to short-circuit because it had surged from the pleasure of a night when the drunkenness and its hangover had freed her from her anxieties of feeling clenched in her own jaws or fists, bound to her body at the hips. But it was necessary to feel the heaviness and the bitterness of her body, to feel the whip and the bar, in order to later soar like birds and sing as she had never sung before, in perfect tone with the color of the music, which, emerging from her mouth full of feverish illusion, would communicate the splendor of her agony set free. She had to sustain the note, hold it firmly, loving it, but resisting and pushing it so it would keep rising and surging up through the elbows of the imagination and down through the armpits of the earthquake, and trembling in the vibrant, divided measure of the tone, and she had to conduct it with the baton while resisting its invasion from afar, and control her emotions, and be the producer, the motor, the speed, as well as the ear listening to the rise of emotion and interrupting the imbalance, disharmony, tone-deafness, and be the hand holding, grabbing, lifting, and encouraging it, and causing the pain of pleasure as her blood rises. And she had to do all of this, not only with the flight of her hands, but with slow and deliberate movements, and by lowering her eyes intensifying the movement of her hands, and by following the movement of silence and the pause of her finger, allowing her hips and shoulders and breathing to be moved by her hands, and by conducting the measure and the diapason, making her neck arch back and her brows furrow, maintaining the emotional current running throughout her body, while her feet are tapping to the beat in her head, her eyes are feeling the tremble, and she opens her mouth uttering certain mute words, and then lowers her tone and submerges it in a balanced effervescence that lowers the voice even further until it vanishes, down the hatch, and then it rounds out the corner of her lips mouthing a round O, and then a vibrant, half-open E, to dot the aggressive, divided i that precedes and interposes another gracious figurative note laughing like a goat, which is an E that comes before a white, open A. Proud and distant, a minor climbs the scale of A major and from there looks for E and tells it what to do with bountiful U, and O is too self-absorbed, it’s like a closed ball, assuming it can’t join E or i because they’re always together or mingling with other fertile couples, but O is the motor of O, of the exclamation OH-OH! It closes its mouth slowly, but the yawns dawns again — and opens its desire to see the sky cloudy — yawn falling from the sky — open, open your mouth wide, never close it, even a yawn, like a prayer, can turn into a replica, a replica — of the same, the very same thing when the open mouth opens the open mouth O, it becomes the exclamation OH-OH! And it awkwardly balances on its two swings, on its two hips, moving, holding, and enclosing it in the claustrophobia of a whole orange, a full moon, or the sun in its highest permanence and splendor, the other vowels of the alphabet are making their pilgrimage wigwagging, zigzagging toward the closed O, toward its obscurity and silence, musically rendering their desire to be loved or joined at last to O, imagine U’s fury when it almost touches it, but U feels like it’s missing a few hairs on its head or it’s missing a hat to cover its bounty and protect it from the burning sun. And by now, A, standing tippy-toe on the top step, arches its leafy branches covered with herbs and bouquets that make it feel so important in the power of the music and the ladder, and all of them, each and every one at its own level, feel so potent and vigorous and fulfill their mission of exalting the production of her name, in complementing and developing all her vigor, from the tip of O’s big toe to the weedy crop on top of E, they are formed by forms that have formed forms, have tightened the measure of her forms, exercised her muscles, heard the grumbling in her belly, the rumbling of her ribs, the knuckles and joints in her fingers, the underarm hair, the counterbeat, the countersweat of the smell, the sulfur and the sopor, the white steam of black breath, the black steam of white breath, and the intense soporific contractions, the warm breath of the open mouth, closing and opening, opening and closing in the slow and deliberate movement, mindful of the movement it makes when opening and closing, supreme control of herself over her own death, watching it while closing her eyes and falling silent as they close, listening to the gentle tremble of her eyelids and gently trembling with them in the splendor of this gentle tremble, in the union of the body with the body, dying and opening, contracting and fading, dividing and closing itself off from everything, on all sides, full of permanencies.

II. Blow-Up

— You open it.

— Why me? You’ve got the keys. I gave them to you. Besides, I left mine inside.

— Why did you leave them inside?

— Because I knew you had yours.

— Why do you depend on me?

— Just open it, and make it fast. And the worst is when you get up in the morning and leave the door open on your way out. With money scattered across the kitchen counter, right next to the entrance. Mindless of the danger you put me in. I sleep until ten. And when I get up and throw some clothes on, I go to open the door and find it’s already open. How careless. To leave the door open. Somebody could walk in and rob me and rape me. And you don’t give a rat’s ass.

— Of course I do. That was careless of me.

— Yeah, what about now? Scratch the knob and I’ll kill you.

— What about now? Let me do it my way.

— Hey, when you’re with me, it’s my way or the highway. Or you want me to call the neighbors so they can see what a spazz you are? C’mon, what kind of jock gets mocked by the locks? Next time you ring my bell, I’m going to ignore it. You think I like it when you ring my bell. No, I don’t like it when you ring my bell. If you’ve got keys, why don’t you use them?

— Because you’re inside. Why can’t you open the door when I ring the bell?

— Because it pisses me off to be inside, hearing the keys fumbling in the lock and hoping with all my heart that you’ll open it yourself, with all my heart, a jingle-jangle later, you give up and start ding-donging, as if I were sitting around all day just waiting to let you in. Suppose nobody is home. Suppose I’m reading. Why do I have to get up to let you in? Do I look like a doorman? Besides, you have keys and they fit. They sure do. You just have to learn how to handle them. It’s no big deal. You’re always making a fuss.

— Shut up.

— You shut up. Step aside.

— Gladly.

— Watch and learn to handle the locks, effortlessly. The rusty one for the bottom hole, a jiggle to the left, and this skinny one for the top slot. You do this just to annoy me. And you do. You certainly do. Never. You hear. I’m not in love. It was never the case. Get it through your head. I don’t love you. You got that? Sometimes I say I love you before I go to bed at night — the intimacy — when I see you snoring as sound as a basset hound, I say — how could I have been so mean to him? Maybe it’s then that I forget what I’m missing in life. But of course, it’s like seeing a corpse, of course, all the good things appear, and I breathe heavy and murmur deep into your ears: I love you. And you roll over in your sleep and wrap your legs around mine, breathing heavy, up and down, with your thumb in your pucker like a lollipop sucker, like a big fat baby, a big lazy oaf. I shake my head no, no, no, no, but I love you, I guess I do, at least that’s what I feel and think when I see you sleeping. Maybe it’s a way of convincing myself that I do. Jabalí had something, a pushing something, a driving energy, even with all his shortcuts and lies. But you, my buddy-buddy, busy-body, are indulgent with me. Sweet and complacent. Why do I always have to throw a hairy conniption to provoke a reaction? If I had another room, if I could close myself away from you, if I wouldn’t have to hear you snoring, lights out, dozing dog. I don’t have the energy to sit at my desk and write two simple words. I crawl back in bed, breathing heavy on your cheeks. When I see you dead like that, I realize how much we have in common. Where is my aspiration? To feel inspired one must aspire. What do I aspire to be: to be inspired, or at least to have a freehold set of mind, free from mental blocks. A house too small, a bad excuse but one nonetheless. Nothing on the road so keep walking, bad and good times, anxiety raining on me — don’t get upset by the downpour, drenching the brain, think clear — but I can’t. The problem comes when I realize I’ve done nothing and I’m still in bed rocking, waiting for Godot or a change of climate. I get so angry at myself that I stand up and write my rage and feel good again, and I change, and I change, and I change, but I never really change. Oh, I skim through the book, and I say it’s growing. So strong. So beautiful. I forgive myself momentarily as I do when I look at my big nose in the mirror. If I stare at it long enough sometimes I can fix it, or at least accept it, depending on my mood. I would like to see myself in the mirror always the same, or maybe like a stranger in the street at whom I smile and stare because I see in him something I see in myself. I always stare to make sure I’m not lost. Do you recognize me? You’re staring at me and you smile. Why? Do you like me? I’d like to ask you a question. Would you smile at me the same way if you knew who I am? Would you still smile so sweet? And you know what it does to me when I get up in the middle of the night, first, suffocating from the heat, I turn off the heater and go to the bathroom only to find the closets open — what’s worse — the sheets hanging off the shelves, the incarnation of my nightmare — the risen dead — and not the good ones. I try to close the door and it derails — and the ghosts are hovering. I’ve asked you, please, clean out the closets. The stench of your sneakers and skanky sweatshirts. I go to the kitchen because my throat is dry, damn, you know the heat, I open the fridge, and my water bottle, where is the cap to my water bottle? Don’t you know the germs get in and the fizz goes out, and I don’t want my water smelling like your chicken curry sandwich. You ruined it. Now nobody drinks from this bottle. I forbid it. I’m throwing it out. I go to the sink and what do I find in the dishwasher? Stacks of dirty dishes, sitting there for eons, with carrot peels and globs of brie stuck on the rims. I’ve had enough. I can’t take it anymore. Your damn keys locking and unlocking my locks. And during the weekends your insolence is unbearable. At least during the week, I’m happy when I hear you leave at eight. Liberty — I say to myself with my eyes half open. I can read in peace. And if I see Bloom watching Gerty from a cliff with his hand on his crotch, all I have to do is draw the shades and let myself go if I feel like it. How sweet. Not to see your face. But now if I don’t wake up, you don’t wake up. You set the alarm for what? To piss me off and snore some more until ten. Because I have an alarm inside, that’s for sure. When I wake up, you know you’re in trouble and you say:

— Breakfast? Orange juice? Croissant?

— No—I say—today I want fruit and bacon.

— Okay—you say—coming right up.

And then you go and take an hour to make me feel guilty for sending you out by yourself. I hear sirens and dread:

— He crossed the street to bring home the bacon and got run over by a bus. Now what’ll I do? I’ve only got enough in checking to cover next month’s rent. Then I’ll have to sell everything and move. Now what?

And worst of all, I’m in the dark, sitting, rocking, fearing your death in the dark because it doesn’t occur to you to turn the lights on. I have to admit I’m relieved when you come back, but as soon as I see, I mean, hear, the keys fumbling in the door, in the dark, in the damned dark, I want to kill you, but the smell of coffee holds me back. Bless his heart — I say — after all, he risked his life for me.

— Breakfast—you say with a smile on your face. You open the white paper bag, and out of the rustling comes…

— What is this?

— Chocolate. Oh, it’s too late for breakfast, chipa. It’s lunchtime. No bacon. No eggs. Have a chocolate bar. Quick energy. I brought you vitamins. Take a swig. They’re good for your bones.

— Where is my orange juice?

— No orange juice. Vitamin C. It’s the same thing.

— Not to me.

— No seeds. No pulp.

— I want my orange juice. Juicy red with its pepas.

— Seeds.

— And I want fresh squeezed. I don’t want chocolate. It gives me grains.

— Pimples.

Why? Tell me, why do you insist on bringing me breakfast in bed when you can never satisfy me? I’m sure that there are oranges and bacon and scrambled eggs out there. It’s just that you’re too eager to disappoint me. As if I couldn’t walk to the corner on my own two legs and buy my own breakfast. It’s a pleasure for me to wake up in the morning, alone, find five dollars and my keys in the kitchen, dress up, brush my teeth, wash and dry my face with a towel, open the door as my stomach growls, ride the elevator, check the bills in the mailbox, relieved that I don’t have to pay them, buy the Post at the nearest newsstand, head to the Greek, read the gossips with the pleasure of a toasted bran muffin with melted butter and a cup of coffee, relax, come home, and start working. Good old times, not so old after all. But here you are, again, interrupting my creative process. And when you take me to Toritos after I’ve been dieting all day long, the first thing you do is open the menu and clear your throat.

— What’s the matter, hon? Frog in your throat?

Take a sip of water.

I find that cough suspicious. Cold. Phlegm. No. Ahem-ahem. Your face turns red. Whenever Jabalí cleared his throat, he was pulling some kind of fast one. If there was a cough, there was a lie.

— I have to leave today—he’d say. Ahem. Department meetings. Ahem. You know how it is. Ahem. Wish you could come along. Ahem. But they’re professors.

Love affairs. Sneaking around with that little bitch of his. I knew he was lying, but I enjoyed playing along, knowing he was lying. But now, ahem, what’s this new little cough about? We’re sitting in the booth and, I swear, I’m totally cool with the mariachis and the candles.

— What should I order, chipo?

— Whatever you want, chipa.

— I don’t know if I should get the gaucho steak or the trio dynamico.

— Get whatever you want, chipa. What should I get?

— Whatever you want, chipo.

— Here comes the waitress.

— Let her wait. We haven’t decided yet.

— I know what I want: the gaucho.

— Ahem, but it comes with garlic bread and fries. Ahem. You are on a diet. Let me see if I have enough to cover it. Sorry. Ahem. You’ll have it next time. Or you’ll have to select between the steak or the piña colada.

— Piña colada, then.

— But, you understand, we’ll have to share the piña colada.

— Hurry up, please, it’s time.

— Just a moment, please. We haven’t made up our minds. For the time being, please, ahem, bring the lady a piña colada.

— Just one?

— Yes, with two straws, and for me, ahem, a frosty glass of tap water with crushed ice, no cubes. You see, ahem, if you hadn’t ordered the piña colada, we could have had two dishes. Now, ahem, I’m running short. Plus the tip. I need a better job. Eating out every night. Did I send out my student loan payments last week?

— I told you to.

— Or is it this week? Wait, I made a deposit last week, which means no problem, it’s due next week.

— Have you decided what you want?

— I’ll have the steak.

— Ahem, no, we’ll have fajitas instead. It’s the same beef, but we can share fajitas.

— Yes, fajitas, thank you.

— How about another drink?

— Just water, please, and the bill. How much do I leave for a tip? 15 % plus tax. Do you know if I paid the credit cards? Kika, we must stop eating out. You should learn how to cook. It would be so much healthier, and we would save so much time and money.

Why take me out only to leave me hungry, unsatisfied? I can’t order what I want from the menu. This is impotence, frustration. Your frustration, your indecision. Look what you’ve done to my silverware. Hands off, I told you. Why don’t you use the set you stole from my brother? My grandmother’s silverware is sacred. I want to have memories and cause for respect. If I have no silver, they respect me less, and if I have no children, even less and less. You have to have something to pass down, so they come around and take care of you when you’re old. They’re precious. You have to take care of them.

— I wanted to surprise you, but you didn’t even notice.

— You promised me you wouldn’t use them again except for special occasions.

— A champagne dinner for two to celebrate the publication of the book by Yale. You didn’t even notice the silver then, when you were supposed to, you went ahead and called Mona and just talked and devoured without tasting the meat. Did you even notice that I left the table?

— I’m sorry. Listen, I’m sorry. Don’t make me feel guilty.

— Did you notice how tender the fillet was?

— I’m sorry. But today I woke up, and breakfast is served on the table, you are not there, and I look at the bagel with cheese, and I see my silver fork tarnished. What? My silver used for bagels? You don’t respect my wishes. You do whatever you please. Whatever you damn well please.

— You said you weren’t hungry, then you asked for more.

— Cheese.

— Why didn’t you tell me? I could have cooked you rice and beans.

— Okay.

— Rice and beans?

— You call that rice? It was soup and beans.

— That’s what you get.

— I told you to do it right next time. But I didn’t tell you to dump it out. I was hungry, and in a minute my rice and beans disappeared.

— I wanted it.

— You had it.

— I’m hungry.

— Tough luck.

— Why do you tantalize me and leave me panging? Then for a little smack in the head, you fall down and play dead at my feet.

— It was supposed to be a coma.

— I don’t want to talk to you.

— My lungs were pumping, and my heart was beating.

— I took you for dead. Not one second, not two, not three. Agony was climbing inside my head. Will I ever regain my self-control? Will I ever find peace of mind again? I wasn’t outside myself. I wasn’t inside myself. I had left myself. Then you bellied up with a grin on your fat face. And I got so angry, I ran out, cold as it was, without a coat. I told you:

— Now it’s really over. Now I really got your number. Don’t think I didn’t get it this time.

I was trying to pull myself together. I didn’t want to get lost, but I didn’t want to ever see your face again.

— You can keep everything. All I want is my dignity.

I can always start over, another day, another book. I didn’t want to come back. I had no keys, no money, no place to go. I could have stayed in the Plaza. I could have, should have, but would have lost my mind if I didn’t force myself to ring the bell, with my chin up, march inside, and shut myself in my room. I didn’t want to talk to you ever again. But here I am. Ding-dong.

— Sorry.

— No more pardons. I’m sick and tired of you, and I don’t want to hear another peep out of you.

— Okay. I won’t talk.

— But you continue.

— And you.

— Did you send out the manuscript?

— No, but I wrote the query letters to the editors.

— You see how irresponsible you are.

— I have my pace.

— You promised by Tuesday. It’s Thursday. What happened?

— What time have I had? Work absorbs my days, then your friends, my nights.

— Had you an iota of responsibility, you’d set priorities, which include, according to your promises, sending out the manuscript. You had the whole weekend, but no, you were exhausted. I understood. I let you sleep. If my friends invite me to dinner, you don’t have to tag along if you have a deadline. But deadlines strike no fear of death. You skip over them with a nonchalant shrug that staggers me. I need to party. Why should I deprive myself? But when I ask you:

— Did you correct my new fragment?

— What time have I had?

— I told you I would, but first I had to consult Jonathan Brent.

— What did he say?

— Get Susan Sontag to blurb it and send it to a small press, then send the next work to an agent who can promote you with big publishers.

— Sounds suspicious. Why can’t it go big now? I think he is setting you up.

— For what?

— To set us back.

— He said you’re ahead of your time, so there’s no rush.

— Nice excuse, dilettante.

— I just won a major award people win when they’re Amaral’s age. 80 years old. I’m 25. I’m decades ahead.

— I’d never say that. You’ll never create my character without beholding my humility.

— 10 years wasted on an apprentice. You still don’t have your priorities settled.

— Priorities? If you didn’t ask Miguel Osuna to make you another coat, we’d have resources to network.

— I have to dress up my characters.

— Now the script writing course is out of the question.

— One of us can still take it.

— I’ll take it and teach you how to make a script.

— Just like you prepared my manuscript. Where are the nachos? You just forget. Another day turned night. Limboland. Limboland. Where is your gold card? Did you ever find it? I bet you left it in a cash machine. It’s stolen. Cancel the card. What are you waiting for? No wonder the manuscripts are not prepared. Waiting for the deadline. Waiting for me to die. You should already be translating this work. My book needs your English.

— The dialogues are fine the way they are. I think we should dedicate ourselves to the structure.

— When do we start?

— This weekend.

— I have a dinner.

— Again? It’s the only time I have to work.

— You see, when Mishy had a party did I go? No. Did I want to go? Yes. Who didn’t want to go? Who?

— You could have gone without me.

— To come home and find you drunk as a skunk with the CD blasting Queen, dancing naked, shrunken and depressed.

— You should have gone.

— Well, I didn’t.

— That’s your choice. I’d love to be with my friends too, but I have responsibilities.

— Where are the hands?

— What hands?

— The glass ones you stole from Brascho’s flat. They were inside the marble egg with my ballpoints. What did you do with them? Go get them.

— They’re not there?

— Go get them.

— You’re sure they’re not there?

— You gave them away.

— I swear on your beloved brother’s grave.

— Don’t use my brother. Why don’t you swear? C’mon, swear by your sick father. Did you give them away? To whom? They were with my pen refills that have also been stolen.

— We could be working. That’s why this book doesn’t progress. I have to be looking for unlucky charms. I’m glad they’re lost.

— Somebody broke into the apartment.

— Who’d steal the hands and leave the jewels?

— That’s what I want to know. You look suspicious.

— I swear on my father’s lungs.

— Get that cross out of my face. You stole that from my brother too, didn’t you?

— That’s why we’re stuck. Petty, petty, petty. I swear, I can see myself in the same spot I’m in right now five years from now.

— Mona’s curse: You’ll be doing nothing in five years.

— That’s my greatest fear.

— And mine. What is mine? I’ll tell you myself. To be here. In this very room watching you looking for those hands five years from now. I know they’re here somewhere — that’s what you’ll be saying, rifling through my drawers with your hot hands saying — you see, I’m a researcher, still searching.

— You interrupted my train of thought. Instead of letting me finish Don Quixote. Sancho could be inspiring me to inspire you, but no, I have to look for worthless trinkets. What do you want them for anyway? Don’t you have anything else to do?

— You’re pushing your luck.

— You’re probably sitting on them.

— The hands?

— The ballpoints. Get off the bed. I have to check the mattress. Ouch!

— I’m stuck. After five years in the same scene I wrote five years ago. Didn’t I bite your ass to calm you down? It worked like a shot.

— Mona’s curse. My greatest nightmare after five years.

— Please don’t count the years. There is something in this that I am still looking for. What right do you have to come in here when I’m concentrating — just when I’m on the verge of an image — here you are opening my desk drawer — right where I’m working — and you don’t just shuffle through it — but you ask me — where are the scissors?

— Yeah, where are the scissors? I have to cut the ad out of the paper. And I need the glue for the envelope. Look, I saved the film schedule for you. What time are you planning to go?

— Why are you asking?

— I need to know when you’re going so I can use the phone. I’ve got agencies to call.

— Why?

— Why else?

— To work? You’re the dog in the manger. You neither eat nor let others eat.

— So when can I use the phone?

— Not when I’m trying to hear myself think.

— Why don’t you go see Cries and Whispers, Autumn Sonata—a double feature for $6.

— Don’t you think I’ve lost enough time already?

— Time is never lost. You need an outlet: cries, whispers. You need explosions, bombs, fireworks, popcorn, music, dialogue. You need the gangster edge. A fatal attraction. A crime of passion. And it should all happen the moment I enter the bathroom. The element of suspense created by slow eerie music — Hitchcock, Welles — and suddenly the rupture. A double-edged knife rips through your stomach. A bloodcurdling scream. A wave of blood rises from the bathtub and washes over you, zigzagging like a serpent over the white tile floor. My expression remains deadpan. One thing is what is happening to you and another is the indifference on my face — who cares if I kill you — I do it like a duty. No mercy, no compassion. Blood Simple.

— Now you want to kill me off. That’s what pisses me off, always changing the plot.

— Well, one of us has to go.

— Not me. Why not you? You’re the one who is fucking my head.

— Blowing your mind.

— No, my murderer, you’re killing me.

— What did the marble say to the sculptor?

— Beats me.

— You’re destroying me!

— But I’m making a masterpiece.

— My foundation is trembling. I’m dropping pieces. Help me!

— But I’m finding your form, giving you a body, liberating your soul — that’s why I’m chipping away, here and there.

— And what if you slip and cut my finger off?

— Chance as collaborator.

— Thank God marble doesn’t think. To let someone mangle you without fighting back or knowing when the experiment is going to end. Suppose it ends in a pile of dust instead of a sculpture.

— Don’t be so negative. It will be a masterpiece.

— Swear?

— Swear. That’s what Leni Riefenstahl thought when Fraus chopped her first film into 100 pieces. She threw a hissy fit because he ruined it. But when she calmed down, she analyzed his editing. Leni had five doors, one door closing after another until they were all closed. It lacked simultaneity and surprise. What Fraus did was this. The first door starts closing to a certain point, then the next door takes over the action, closing a lil’ more, and the 3rd takes over where the 2nd left off, and the 4th where the 3rd left off, and the 5th completes the action, the shot, and the scene. Five doors become one big slam, continuity without repetition. Even though Fraus had the wrong pace, he had the right idea. He knew just what she needed to do. Look at this plot:

Woman beats dog

Dog nips woman

Woman plays dead

Dog barks help

Neighbor kills dog

— You mean Pinola.

— I don’t mean, no, I don’t mean. Whomever. Many neighbors, many masters. Who cares if it’s Costi with a rifle or Pinola with a pistol? The neighbors see the woman dead and kill the dog.

— What does she do next?

— Jumps up and down shrieking:

— Murderer! You killed my poor little dog!

Who’s the ultimate victim?

— The neighbor.

— The dog, the dog died a martyr to save his mistress even though she beat him.

— The woman, now she misses her dog even though he bit her. And when the neighbors see her, she is bleeding on the floor. And what do you see?

— I see, I see, a beaten woman lost and found, yelling because her dog is dead. She is beaten by the dog and the neighbor. Who do you think should play her role?

— Me, of course, she is me. You, of course, the beaten dog.

— I haven’t even started to nip at you.

— Can you imagine when the neighbors come?

— Were you the ones arguing last night?

— No, why?

— It must have been the other neighbors. With these cardboard walls, I can’t tell if the hullabaloo comes from your flat or the west side. He is very violent, isn’t he?

— Who?

— Who else?

— Well.

— It must be trying on your nerves.

— I can’t wait to see you hit the floor. Make it real. Drop. Drop. Dead.

— And then you, poor fool, believing, barking: Auuuu! Auuuu!

— Who is it?

— Pinola’s at the door.

— Watch out. It might be Costi with a rifle. Shut up and you won’t get shot. This is a wonderful plot. I love it.

— And then you’ll scream:

— You killed my poor little dog!

— And what if I kill him out of revenge?

— Then you’re not a victim. You’ll go to jail.

— I’ll bring charges against him for breaking and entering, let alone the use of a deadly weapon on a helpless pet.

— It was an act of defense.

— He defended me by killing the only thing I love.

— You love me.

— Yes, I do. But kill him before he starts barking again at me: Auuuu! Auuuu! So much time wasted on your tongue. You think I hear what that mouth is sputtering. Not a voice, not a sound. Static. The lips flapping with spit bubbles popping on the tip of the tongue, repeating:

— Pipa, you are doing fine. I’m convinced, this is the road.

King of the road, you say you’ll rent a mobile home to cross the desert. Why the hell don’t you do it? Leave me alone. Your tongue’s vibration in your mouth, in my ears. A month goes by. A lot of cock-a-doodle-doos, a lot of movies but no move-outs. Nope. Movies, cock-a-doodle doos, cartoons.

— Don’t worry—you say—the time will come. You’re too excited, too impatient.

You talk so much. You talk so, so much:

— Did you read about Pee Wee Herman in the Post? Arrested during a porn flick with his pants down. Had his pee wee in his hands. Nabokov was probably the same. They say Joyce raped his daughter, that’s why she was schizophrenic. Ah, Pee Wee, who would pick a name like that anyway, like pee-pee, I want to pee, and to think his show was canceled just because his little pee wee went weee-weee in his pants.

Van Gogh would have cut off both ears if he lived with you. I hate it when you flap it and flap it so much so fast that I can’t understand what you are saying. But don’t think that I don’t notice what you’re up to. Oh yeah, pleased, delighted, so much enlightenment when you find one fragment, one lonely ranger without a horse, and then you patronize me, swearing:

— You’re doing fine.

And I’m on my deathbed telling you:

— I know I’m dying.

But you insist:

— You’re looking better than ever!

Says who? You? I wouldn’t believe you if your tongue were notarized. All your yelling drives me up the wall.

— All your mumbling makes my skin crawl.

— It’s like a dead end — yelling — it goes nowhere. If only I had a little peace. If only I could tell you: don’t yell at me. And you’d hear me begging you not to yell at me. If only you’d admit this book doesn’t work. Just come out and say it.

— Keep nagging. Don’t get me started.

— Before you got here, nobody, I swear, nobody ever tried to push my buttons like that.

— Buttons, schmuttons.

— Tomorrow morning you’re out of here.

— Nag, always picking a fight.

— Mortifying me in front of the neighbors.

— Grumbling under your breath. Rubbing my nose in everything.

— It’s your fault. Moby Dick was queen of the sea until you got here, Ahab.

— I’m going to throw myself out the window.

— Go ahead, damn it. Take a flying leap. Your histrionics are distracting me. And then I get depressed. I put my head down. I try to read and I can’t. I want to think. And you know what’s echoing inside me — all that yelling. Scandalizing the neighbors, waking them up, disturbing the people downstairs, throwing keys, scissors, dishes on the floor. I wouldn’t be surprised if they complained to management. How embarrassing to receive a note under the door. You think you’re still on the farm, or what? You bring out the worst in me. Why don’t you respect me?

— Respect is a two-way street.

— It’s a one-way street. All you have to do is shut up when I say shut up. And how many times have I told you? I don’t want to see you naked. Get dressed, I say, or get out.

— Kika, kika, I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean it. How does it feel?

— How do you think it feels?

— Kika, I’m sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose.

— Call a doctor. I won’t forgive you.

— Don’t forgive me, but I didn’t do it on purpose.

— The only time you close the door. On purpose. My sandal is behind it. You must have felt the door slam on my sandal, on my toenail.

— Whoa, it’s really black. Sorry, kika, it wasn’t on purpose.

— Sorry, your mother! You knew it. Look how you’re laughing. Shameless. Why did you do it? Gangrene. What if they have to amputate? Look at the pus swelling out the sides. Get the iodine. And hurry up.

— Sorry, it’s funny. I swear, I didn’t even notice. I opened the door, and you knocked me over. You bit me. Your jaw was contorted. And then you pulled my hair. I yelled:

— Ouch! That hurts!

— That hurts, bastard? Never, listen, I’ll never be able to hurt you bad enough. Bastard. Ouch! Ouch!

— Then you kicked off your sandal, and out popped your big toe, all black and blue. A cockroach. A wrinkled grimace. Like a raisin. Then silence fell. Horror. A silent horror.

— A silent scream. Maybe I’ll rip it off — nail and all. Maybe I’ll un-nail the nail that’s been nailing me, I mean, your nail.

— And then you threw yourself on the bed. Rolling back and forth like a rolling pin over ball of dough, roly-poly.

— Roly-poly? Holy moly. I dove into the mushy cushions to see if it would ease the piercing pain. It was swelling fast, growing sharper, finer.

— Sharper in wit, memories, and blaring trumpets.

— Go ahead, laugh.

— It’s not at you — it’s just a nervous reaction. It reminds me of when I was a kid. I kept my albino hamster in the back patio. One day he escaped from his cage, and I stepped on him with my shoe by accident. You shoulda seen how the blood trickled from his red eyes, yes, that’s how my buddy Monte Cristo bled to death, from his eyes.

— And I’m still bleeding. Let’s see if this washes away the bad blood between us. What am I going to do with you?

— That’s what you get for wishing me dead.

— Sorry, I didn’t curse you. If I remember correctly, it was you who cursed me:

— Why don’t you drop dead.

No, wait, that’s not how it went — it was meaner — you said something worse:

— Why don’t you and every last one of your species drop dead.

— Yes, as long as it frees me from you—I screamed—yes — let worst come to worst because nothing could be worse than living with you.

At that moment a nasty grin crossed your lips.

— What’s so funny, Dracula? Hey, what’s that Sakura sack doing in the middle of the room? I don’t want to see it in my house again. How many times have I told you?

— I’m not gonna throw it out. My brother gave it to me. Why should I throw it out?

— You’re asking for it. It goes or you go.

— I’m not gonna throw it out.

— You want me to throw it out? You really want me to throw it out? Fine. I’ll throw it out.

— At that moment, the door flung open and the Sakura sack went flying down the hallway. I tried to close it but couldn’t, so I slammed it even harder.

— You slammed it even harder on my big toe. My poor toenail. You knew it was there. You must have felt something weird under the door. You knew something was underneath.

— Don’t point at me.

— Yes, I point at you.

— Don’t point at me, I said.

— I point at you.

— Take away that finger.

— Why? It’s just a finger.

— I said, take away that finger. Don’t point at me.

— I said, I am pointing at you. You are the one who is pointing at me. You are the one who is pointing at me. You are pissing me off. You are really pissing me off.

— Don’t repeat yourself. I heard you. Don’t repeat yourself. I said what I said. Do not point that finger at me. Take that finger away.

— You are repeating yourself too many times. Stop yelling at me. And stop pointing at me. I heard you. Now, listen to me. Do not talk when I am speaking. Listen to me.

— Don’t point at me. I’m listening. But take that finger away. You did the same thing to Monique Wittig:

— You like Fellini? — you said.

— I like two of his films: Satyricon and Juliette of the Spirits — she said.

— You don’t like Fellini? — you said.

— I said what I said—she said. I like two of his films.

— So—you said—you hate Fellini.

— Idiot, exactly, that is exactly what I said to her. I hate compromises. Either you like him or you don’t. Not two. Listen to me. Everything or nothing.

— Don’t point at me.

— That’s a compromise. Either you like him or you don’t. What do you mean? You like me when I make good films. And when do I make good films? When you like me? I don’t believe in that. It’s not real.

— Listen to me. Unreliable. You’re so unreliable. You tell me you like Almodóvar, and I trusted that you like Almodóvar. But then when you meet Jean Franco, you say you don’t like Almodóvar. I said:

— But you told me you like Almodóvar.

— Because you told me you like Almodóvar. I wasn’t going to disagree with you even though I hate Almodóvar. Jean, you hate Almodóvar?

— I hate Almodóvar. He’s a terrible filmmaker.

— You see, I hate Almodóvar. The only thing new in him is his cynicism. But he imitates American comedy ad nauseam. After Buñuel, he’s a retrograde.

— Did you like The Piano?

— No, that feminism was so decimononic.

— You see, I hated The Piano. I went to closing night at the film festival, and I was planning to give a standing ovation. But I turned into rock and couldn’t get up from my seat. I’m glad you didn’t like it. It confirms my suspicions. I was so angry when I left the film.

— You were also angry when you saw Sweetie.

— Because it was so dirty.

— It was an original.

— Jean, did you like Sweetie?

— I loved Sweetie.

— Me too, I loved Sweetie.

— Why contradict her? To make people uncomfortable? If I were to say whatever I think, I would not have a single friend. You are out of an argument. I won. End of discussion. I won. And you know it.

— Don’t point at me.

— That’s why you lost. I pointed at you. I won. I don’t make compromises. I like Fellini. Either yes or no.

— How would you like it if I pointed in your face?

— You can, I don’t mind, I won.

— It’s bugging you.

— Yeah.

— Then why don’t you just kill it? Or let me do it. I can’t stand the buzzing. I wish I could fly invisible. I envy her liberty. She’ll tease you, bite you, suck your blood and steal away. And you can’t catch her. She’s too quick. Now she’s napping on your yellow pages. Why don’t you kill her now? Fast and precise. There’s satisfaction in doing it right. A good swat on the first try. Gimme it. Where is she? Piece of cake. Oops. Don’t move. If you weren’t distracting me — in a flashback or flash-forward — with my pupils glimming, I’d snap the killing moment instantly like a photographer, like that, click, and now, oops, again, damn, I can’t stand it.

— You are not handling the situation very well. You have to seduce her first and then wait until she feels at ease with you, when she is most quiet, when she trusts you, she has to trust you so much that she feels she can sleep, imagine, she feels she can close her eyes and let herself go in front of you. That’s the moment you sneak off your shoe. No vacillation, no doubt, you must act straightforward. Now she’s feeling relaxed, she’s on the verge of falling asleep, her eyes are half asleep, and she’s feeling saved, protected by you. Keep your eye on her as if you’re playing tennis and she’s the ball. Now watch the ball coming towards you, watch her crossing the net, watch her bouncing on the court, bouncing hard and jumping back and high into the air. Where is she? You’re aroused by a sudden doubt. You think you have missed the shot, but you continue. Now, take it back, okay, move back, stretch your hand back just over your shoulder, in slow motion, you must be aware of the slow motion so she doesn’t know that you are her enemy. She trusts you now. That’s why she has just stretched out her legs. If you dare to miss this shot. It must be straightforward, no compassion. Kill her. You must give me this pleasure. I am the one who is going to clap for you. If you do it meekly, believe me, I am going to be very disappointed. You don’t have three shots. You can’t wound her and leave her suffering because you smeared one of her little legs across the white wall with your dirty tennis shoe. She’ll recognize in her state of agony that you were not her friend, that, in fact, you were her enemy. What does she do then? Nothing, she’s trapped. No, please, don’t you dare torture her, please don’t, kill her with the first swat, the pleasure of being hit right there, on the dot, on the spot, with no sensation at all, no hard feelings, no recognition of anything.

— She’s dead. She’s dead.

— Is she really dead? She’s still moving, idiot. After all this training, how can I trust you? Shit.

— Will you please shut up, kika.

— I know, I know exactly what you are saying. I can’t bear it myself. It accumulates in my soul so much anger. Anger is not the word — so much anguish. I know what you mean; it’s as if I myself want to scream:

— Shut up, kiko!

But then it happens, it always happens that way. It comes straight from my lungs, opens my breath, and gives me the strength to scream. I’m writing it while I’m screaming it. It’s implicit in the tone, in the way it smells the page. It gives my tongue an orgasm. I swear, I feel as if I am getting hold of a pear, as if I am climbing a tree to get hold of an orange. And right there you are, losing your grip, holding out your arms, falling. I hold out my arms, I don’t stop, I reach and stretch higher and higher, trembling, and with strength and sadness, I take you in my arms, trembling. I hold you tight as if you were a baby. I let you cry a little bit in my arms:

— Don’t cry—I say. Please don’t cry. It’s over. I saved you. You’re holding tight to my arms. It’s over. Don’t cry.

And then it’s over, it’s all over. It passes away. And I feel like I had it, I feel good. Really good. I don’t care if you got it. Who cares if you understand it? I got it, pipo! I got it, pipo! I got it, pipo!

— Let’s go, concentrate, c’mon, concentrate.

— Puto, what now, puto? Trying to blind me, or what?

— C’mon, turn around.

— To make me dizzy, or what?

— Do what I say.

— Help me concentrate, I said. Don’t make me dizzy.

— I’m inspiring you, can’t you tell? Now step up on the bed. It’s a small step. Careful, atta girl, that’s it.

— Hypnotize me, I said. That’s what Jabalí used to do. He used to put his hands on my forehead and press my temples.

— Chase your tail like Dulcinea, atta girl.

— No, I’ll fall and break a leg.

— Up you go, down around, merengue to the left and back again. Now upsy-wupsy for a piggyback ride.

— Now how can I write if I’m dizzy?

— C’mon, once more trot, atta girl.

— Shut up. I’m the one giving the orders now. Take me to my desk. Sit, right there.

— That’s not your chair.

— Sit.

— It’s over there.

— Take me there, sit down, and don’t move.

— Get ready.

— Shut up and don’t laugh.

— Now try and say I’m not a muse. I bet no writer has done it yet. Not even Henry Miller, who bragged about whoring the whores with pen in hand, with both instruments moving along. Who could be simultaneously writing and fucking? It was a lie. He wrote alone seated with his legs crossed under a typewriter. This is unique. I inspired you, not with dope, just with a sweatband over your eyes. I set you up, hypnotized you, and then, to prove that I’m totally potent, I became the chair of the woman writer. Virginia Woolf would have a fit — a chair of one’s own. Didn’t I tell you that I had an artist inside me? And a thinker, Paco Pepe told me so.

— I had a dream that I was pregnant.

— Don’t worry, it means new ideas are coming. Do you realize what we are doing? Never in the history of literature. James Joyce didn’t write Ulysses seated in Molly’s lap.

— Nora’s.

— Hurry up. My leg is falling asleep. I’m not made of wood. I’ll call my autobiography: My Life as a Chair.

— I always knew that what you want is to write: your biography, your life, your chair. How can I write with my chair bumping and grinding? And the worst. Oh, the dog is coming out of my mouth. I’m gagging. Open my jaw. Oh, save me.

— What’s wrong? Want some water? Let me slap you on the back.

— I’m gagging. The dog is coming out of my mouth. Save me.

— What are you saying?

— A gobber of illusion is gagging me. Faster and faster it galloped like a wild horse that turned into a puppyzuelo in my mouth, and I was thrilled to have given birth to that little puppy.

— What are you saying, loca?

— Didn’t I tell you I had a dream I was pregnant?

— Good news. It means new ideas are dawning.

— But I had a little black Dulcinea who came out of my mouth, wet and curly, and slid down my tongue.

— Which is certainly big enough.

— Her little tail spun around in my mouth like a propeller, prickling and tickling my palette and gums. Almost a feast. I clapped and clapped when I saw her leap from my lips and start giving me kisses of affection, my mother, she thought I was her mother, kisses of affection on my neck, my cheeks, my eyes. Howling and showing her fangs, wagging her little tail, patting my nose with her paw, pawing and gnawing me. I, mother at last, of a Scottish terrier. You know what this means?

— Of course, it means I’m a father. You’re giving birth through your mouth, through your tongue to another fragment. Tell me, did it scream or did it bark?

— What do you mean?

— Well, you’re a barking bitch biting my tongue and my tail.

— It’s obvious you’re missing the shot again. I went to the Met and saw A Lion Chasing a Dog and Children Playing with Fire. Then I saw Siqueiros’s Echo of a Scream. Siqueiros’s boy gives birth to a scream that has a body. You don’t hear the scream with your ears. You hear it because another boy comes out of his throat. Voices of silence. Anyway, I gave birth thinking of these paintings, and I was not in agony thinking of you. What a relief to find a healthy pup, wagging her tail. She immediately started poking for my tits. Look for your mother someplace else. I was astounded. I woke up with my eyebrows suspended in surprise, and I repeated to myself in disbelief:

I had a puppy, can you believe it,

I gave birth to Dulcinea,

so small, so, so, beautiful, all moving,

all turning, and stretching, all tender.

I had a dog, can you believe it.

I gave birth to a puppy.

And I was happy, happy, happy that I woke up from my dream, thinking with great relief:

— Thank God it was a puppy. What the hell would I have done with a baby? At least I know what to do with a dog, but with a baby? And weird enough it was through the mouth.

Turn on the faucet. Listen to it run. Doesn’t it make you wanna…

— No, not yet.

— Ssh-ssssh, pee-pee. Let it go. Pssss-pssss. Pull it out. Pssss-pssss. Wait a second. Let me take it off. At the same time. Got it, the same time. My legs will be the bridge over the glass. Stand in front of me. Now, the trick is to piss through my piss, and you lose, you lose if you miss. Both waters must come to an end, I mean, to an understanding. They must run together, rest a while, establish a conversation and run along again. This way, I’ll know if you can keep up with me. Ready?

— Easy, too easy.

— Come, come along the river of my desires.

— I drank a whole bottle of Perrier for this?

— Don’t splash me. C’mon. A lil’ piss here. A lil’ piss there. Here a lil’. There a lil’. I lift my leg and leave a trail so I’ll know I was here when I pass by again — I’ll follow the scent of my piss. I love to piss around the world — on lawns, on walls — like a hose, I lift my leg and relieve myself — I relieve my soul — so I’m not stressed, trying to hold it in because I can’t do it in the house, on a piece of newspaper — I don’t like to piss on the news. I like to piss on the ground, on the roots of a tree, suddenly stop and say: here, I’ll piss right here. Right in this spot. On a sapling. On a tomato seedling. In the dung of a tree. Under the shade of a cypress. When it’s raining. Where nobody wants me to. On buses. On lawns. In unusual spots. Where I feel fine. When I can’t hold it any longer. When I don’t want to. I do it. When I don’t have to. When I’m laughing. When the sun comes out. When I don’t feel like it. When I’m alone. When I feel bad. When it’s raining. And it stops. When I can’t anymore. Whenever I want.

— Like this.

— Like this, oh, it tickles. Silky, warm, and steady. Next time we’ll use a glass. At the same time. You in yours. And me in mine. We’ll put them in the tub, empty. And then we’ll get inside, naked. Over here. We’ll turn the water on and unplug the stopper so the bathtub stays empty. Then the race begins. Whoever pisses into the glass longer wins.

— Wins what?

— If I win, I get to.

— To what?

— To piss on you. And if you win, you get to do it to me.

— I don’t want to win.

— Me neither.

— Why don’t you stand up in the air with your feet on each side of the bathtub ledge, and I’ll stand behind you. I’ll embrace you the minute you start, and then you and I piss into the same glass at the same time. Together as one.

— That’s worse than giving birth to a dog. What’s all the fuss about taking a piss? It’s not fair. It’s just not fair. It’s so unfair.

— What’s wrong?

— Why can’t you leave my glass alone? I want to compete, but no, you have to turn it into an embrace. Get off, get your hands off me. I’m not in the mood for love. Give me some space. Let me breathe. For crying out loud. How can I write with you underneath? And everything is a game. Where’s the seriousness? Jabalí, come back, come back, wherever you are. I don’t like your games. They lack spontaneity. It has to be music. It has to be my way. Let’s play the scratched record. I say:

— I did it my-my-my-my…

And then you say:

— Oh, the record’s scratched.

And I lift needle from the scratched record with two fingers, and as I move it, lift your head and follow the movement of my fingers, from right to left. Flash your dimples, squint as if you were greeting the audience, and shed a tender tear so that they know you’re nice and sensitive, what a lovely girl, what a sweet dear, and as I set the needle down, put your head down, chin in, and take a bow to let them know you’re expecting thunderous applause. Accept the accolades with your eyes, your head, and then finish with:

— waaaaay, I mean, way. Yes, thank you, I did it my-my-my-my…

I move the needle again, you move your head, wink, and repeat with your arms open to embrace the applause:

way — way — way

way — cha, cha, cha,

way — ha, ha, ha,

waaaaay

my way.

— Oh, kiko, can you believe it?

— What?

— What I’m seeing.

— What?

— My funeral.

— How, tell me how it goes.

— You’re wearing your black tie and wrinkled corduroy suit, carrying my coffin, with Paco Pepe giving the eulogy, and the Children’s Choir of San Juan singing:

The poor old donkey fell dead in his tracks,

Lugging the wineskins on his bony back.

To-ra-loo-ra-loo. To-ra-loo-ra-loo.

Oh, chipo, I can’t. I get a knot in my throat just seeing it. It’s beautiful. Beautiful.

— What?

— The burial. You’re smiling, thinking:

— She’s dead. At last. Now I can rest. After the storm comes peace.

But nonetheless, you’re crying. Yes, you’re crying too.

— I have to prepare myself, don’t you think?

— You should always be ready. But don’t think I’m going anytime soon. I’ve got plenty more ahead of me.

— Oh, I was thinking…

— Not yet.

— Sorry.

— You disappoint me.

— But you’re not leaving.

— Later, not now. I’m enjoying my fantasies too much.

— Are you in love?

— Yes, and you?

— Yes, but it’s platonic.

— How so?

— The person I’m in love with is in love with someone else.

— What makes you so sure?

— About what?

— His relationship.

— I know that he is married.

— And what if I told you that relationship is over?

— Should I believe you?

— Yes, it is over. Answer me. Who are you in love with?

— I can’t say. It’s platonic. Want a cigarette? I’ll go buy them. What do you smoke?

— Oh, chipi, you skipped the part about the stem.

— What stem?

— Like this, remember?

— Oh, you mean when he ran his fingers slowly up and down the stem of the wine glass. His eyes turned misty when the jukebox began to play Barbra Streisand’s “Memories.”

— Blackbirds will come again, but they won’t come back the same.

— But why—I asked—why won’t they come back the same?

— You can’t cross the same river twice. New waters. Where are my cigarettes?

— I’ll go buy them.

— True Blue. But no one except me pays for my vices. You have to make the next move — checkmate.

— Why me?

— It’s the rules of the game.

— Well, then. With you.

— With me? What a flirt. I know what you are after.

Honestly, I wasn’t after anything, but the insinuation turned me on. I had to make the next move — checkmate. I did, and the Big Bad Wolf ate me in the dark. He ran his tongue over my teeth as if to see if my pearls were real, and I felt him gliding over each one, and I slipped my tongue under his and he went wild and bit me and our tongues and tails went up and down like the surf until all the sucking of nipples, bottles, and bonbons quenched our desire like squeezed lemons, and when I opened my eyes and tasted him on my lips, his tongue was diving and lunging like a goldfish under a leafy plant in a fishbowl, and it was gorgeous to see the goldfish swimming with its golden-orange, its belly pregnant with milky jellyfish, its sexual bulge, and its tail swishing and melting in my mouth. Ummm. I sighed, having lost my breath, and came to my senses. Imagine, once Jabalí warned me:

— I don’t want you here when my friends come. You have to leave.

And I was going to leave, but when his friends came, Jabi said:

— Don’t go. Come have a drink with us.

— I can’t, I’m sorry. Maybe next time—I said, tearing up, and then I whispered to one of them on the side, sniffling with hiccups, lifting my teary face and lowering it again:

— I’d like to, hic, but he won’t let me go with you, hic.

— If she doesn’t come, we don’t go. Period.

He took me by the arm to lift my spirits and dry my valley of tears.

— I would show her off if she were mine.

— Sure, that’s what pretty chicks are for. Relax, you’re not the only one.

— I don’t socialize with students—Jabalí said.

— They’re the best. They’re easily impressed. Listen, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

— I’m not ashamed of anything. Yes, come along—Jabalí said to me between clenched teeth while pinching my other elbow to the rhythm of:

— You’ll-pay-for-this.

— But, you told me, hic, I can’t. So, hic, I won’t.

Then off I ran like Little Red Riding Hood from the Big Bad Wolf. It was revenge. It was obvious his friends didn’t approve of his behavior. Imagine how humiliating that was for someone as vain and conceited as he was — but it was even worse for me because they were his friends after all. And what was I to them? Just another pretty chick. Pity is the pits. And I felt bad, really bad.

— You betrayed him. You didn’t keep the secret. You were accomplices. That’s what love is all about. Complicity.

— I didn’t betray him, my eyes betrayed me. It’s like the rain. Tell me, who can stop the rain? It’s against my nature. I wasn’t born for closets or twilights. Sometimes Jabalí would hide me in his room when he had company. What if — I thought — what if they happen to open the door and find me hiding here? How scary. How embarrassing.

— What a fool for playing along. If it were me, I would’ve dealt him another hand:

— Are they gone yet? Can I come out now?

— I don’t betray the people I love.

— But you told his friends he wouldn’t let you go.

— After I had said, “I can’t,” after my tears had betrayed me. I was already caught and couldn’t turn back. You can’t cross the same river twice. These were new waters. Salt waters. I was walking down the sidewalk when a taxi pulled up ten minutes later. Jabalí rolled down the window, stuck his head out, and shouted:

— You sonnavabitch, get in here!

How dare that motherfucking bastard call me a sonnavabitch. Jabalí was an illegitimate child. It’s perfectly legit to be illegit, but since I knew that was his Achilles’ heel, I shot my arrow there.

— I’m not getting in, you bastard. If I’m a sonnavabitch, you are a bastard, a real bastard. Try to deny what’s bugging you inside. It’s me, angel, your love.

— Believe me, you’re no angel.

— It’s not my fault. They’re voices.

— The insanity plea. It wasn’t me. I was possessed by voices.

— That’s why Jabalí left me. He couldn’t differentiate between fantasy and reality.

— I hate you.

— If you hate me, I’m leaving.

Hatred is just another voice. Let it be dramatic. Let it hate. Sometimes you have to voice hatred to voice love. They’re natural stages, and there’s always a backstage door and someone is knocking. It’s me, damn it. Don’t act like you don’t recognize me. You know who I am. It’s me. I’ve come to kill you. Killers, of course, have their own reality too. I’m not justifying the act, rather the fantasy. I’ve changed. But I’m still the same person. Open up. Understand me. Love me. It’s time to open all the doors of incomprehension and hear the siren’s song.

— That’s a low blow. You shouldn’t have gone there.

— I didn’t mean “bastard” in the literal sense of the word — illegitimate, fatherless — not in that sense, but “bastard” in the sense of a “lowlife sonnavabitch motherfucker.”

— Well, that’s okay.

— I had hoped it wasn’t our last goodbye, and it wasn’t. To this day I have recurring nightmares of a bat descending from the sky so slow and quivering in its flight — it’s eerie to watch it descend and announce its arrival. Then in comes Jabalí as a dirty wild boar, kicking up the dust as if he had just crossed the entire desert; he arrives at your house, filthy, grunting. I can hardly understand his grunts.

— Prff-prrff-prrff. I’ve come to take you away. Prff-prrff-prrff.

I hop on his back, and the bastard starts bucking and grunting and running down the hallway with me in the saddle, and I’m no jockey so I’m clutching for my life onto his reins, stirrups, and fangs, and we’re racing through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona until the pig, the filthy pig bucks me off into the desert dunes. And I wake up shuddering, gasping for air.

— Well believe me, if Jabi comes back and you hop back into the saddle, then that’s what you deserve. You can shrivel up in the wasteland where he dumped you. Yes, I know your tactics. My house, ah, he wanted to take you from my house. First, ha, I overstayed my welcome in your house, and now all of a sudden, it’s my house when you want me to rescue you from the desert dunes. The boar breaks into my private property to rape my little pussydog. How did you know it was him? Did it have his face, his voice, or what?

— Why would it have his face? It was a pig, a real pig. We’ve called him Jabalí so many times that he became a boar. I don’t even mention his name anymore. Why should I? He is a pig.

— Which is worse: if your lover dies or if he leaves you?

— If he leaves me and goes on living without me — unforgivable. If he leaves me and drops dead — an improvement. But to leave me cold-blooded is to kill me. If the killer had killed himself as well, it wouldn’t be so bad. But he didn’t die. He got away scot-free, only to kill again.

— The lover’s death is always worse because all hope of reconciliation is gone.

— Yes, but death can elevate him and put him on a pedestal, whereas if he dumps you, even if you still feel the love, you stop idealizing him. How could he have been my lover? He fooled me. I woke up from one reality into another and became a stranger to myself and to others. Ten years passed, ten long years. Ten years pass as quickly as seven. Seven years passed and soon it was ten, and I kept wondering:

— When will I see Jabalí again?

And who would’ve known I was reliving the way we were — over and over again in my head — distorting the fact that Jabalí cheated on me. This summer I went to a painting exhibit and saw him there on the other side of the revolving doors. I began to feel my heart racing as my cheeks began to blush, and I smiled, not quite, but my lips did part ever so faintly.

— Should I say hello or not? Turn your back on him. Don’t turn your back. Yes, do it.

More than ten years passed, ten long years. I went through the revolving doors, and Jabalí looked at me as if he were about to greet a long-lost friend after hearing the tragic news — serious, compassionate — as if to show how sorry he was to hear about my brother’s death. I looked him in the eye, and as soon as I acknowledged him, I turned the coldest cheek as if he were a complete stranger.

— Like he doesn’t exist. Like he never existed. Like he was never born. Like his father treated him. Like he treated me.

His eye began to twitch — he blinked — so much love, so long ago. He moved his tongue and swallowed hard. I heard the dry knot in his throat and a bolero playing in the background. I huffed and he grunted — a wild boar grunt — spilled milk — trapped waters. I was so close, so close we could’ve touched and talked, but I looked across the distance between us, swallowed hard, and walked right through him — the apparition of my nightmares — he knew I still loved him, but after so much time and so many gashing lies, what else could I do but look past the distance and slap him with silence.

— Still I love you and always will — my lips are sealed against yours, untouched — all that you gave me, mi amor, all that you taught me, all that you fooled me — I remember the way you used to drive me wild, killing me softly with your love, coming between my downy thighs — and when you’d take me from behind like a frog, I wouldn’t croak, I’d bite and scratch and spring free into the bolero of my orgy. Bolero, sí, bolero, mi amor. I looked past your eyes and kept walking as if you didn’t exist though you never ceased to exist in all the existence I felt beating within me — lightning, thunder, star. But then I ignored you, and you, me. The distance and the secret regard recede but never die — what a shame.

I was born alone. I’ll die alone.

— You came into this world with the help of your mother, a doctor, and two nurses. Let’s see if you’re as lucky on your way out. You ought to love what you have instead of long for what you’ve lost.

— I’m not longing. I love.

— You’re reminiscing about what you used to love.

— Yes, but I don’t long for it. Nostalgia is decadence.

— Well then, stop talking about the past. Nobody’s interested in your autobiography.

— It’s my novel — let me write it. I have to revisit the past to see whether my hopes have been dashed or if they can keep dreaming.

— Your past, as if it were something to be nostalgic about. When we would take our long walks up Madison Avenue to Sant Ambrose, my mecca and goal, where we would slurp gelato cones, you would stop in front of the pastry shops and plan the parties you dreamed of hosting with parfaits, truffles, cream puffs, and the Sant Ambrose cake decorated with Starry, Starry Night, and for Christmas, you wanted the potbellied Santa Claus stuffed with mousse and pannetoni.

— Maybe we can take Santa Claus to Puerto Rico as a Christmas present for my mother. It’s made of marzipan. Will it melt?

My thirst would grow when after the gelato we would visit the Met, and there you would stand in front of Rembrandt and say out loud:

— You were really a buffoon like me. You had Hendriecka and Tito to save you. If only I could have a Tito helping me. I used to have a Jabalí.

It always baffled me how, instead of revering his profounds of mind, you would jot down the dates the portraits were restored. Then you would spend the rest of our visit admiring the museum’s track lighting and gift shops. And it always struck me that wherever we went the most minuscule objects caught your fancy in display windows — sunglasses, whistles, pens. Once a tennis racquet made of chocolate. You thought of sending it to your mother in Puerto Rico. And you browsed for clothes and shoes at the most conservative boutiques, and you would tell me over and over again the story about the only gift Jabalí ever gave you, apart from the Pan Am peanuts he would bring from his MLA trips to Indiana and Mississippi.

— He said he wanted to buy me a sweater, the most beautiful sweater in New York. Time went by and I never received my sweater, so I found it myself in Ferragamo. It was the most beautiful sweater in New York.

You took him to Ferragamo, and he said:

— But that’s half my paycheck!

— I never get anything except peanuts. You promised.

Then you told him how your grandmother used to take you shopping.

— What do you want?

— Nothing.

— Don’t be shy. Take whatever you want.

— These.

— That’s all? And these? You want them? Take them all.

How you used to carry the whole store in your arms, and when the cashier would ring it up, Granma would say to her:

— She thinks she is rich—and then coldly to you—you are not rich.

And how you used to feel humiliated each time.

— But if it weren’t for Granma, all I would have is peanuts.

And with that peanut zinger, you finally got him to buy you the most beautiful sweater in New York. And he always took you to the Right Bank. When we passed the peach stucco facade, we would crouch and peer through the window.

— He really knew how to dine a lady. The Right Bank. There’s a garden in the back where we would have our wine under the open skies. We used to come here when I lived on Madison Avenue.

I used to imagine you and Jabalí in the narrow darkness, drinking wine among the red and white checkered tables, and I’d thirst for a chilled glass of white. My stomach was growling.

— Let’s go to the Right Bank.

I figured if Jabalí brought her here, for once she won’t complain. We took a garden table, sat on cold metal chairs, and sipped our wine.

— White?

— Sour.

— And the salad?

— Limp.

— Well, why did you order a salad? Jabalí would have never ordered a salad.

By this time I had realized he was as common as peanuts and that’s why you didn’t know how to dress yourself, buying old maid sweaters from Ferragamo. Penelope did the same thing with her Dalmatians. After Xochi died she bought a puppy with identical spotting, and convinced he was the reincarnation of Xochi, she named him Xochi Too. But she was in for a big surprise. Whenever she called him Xochi Too, he walked away and ignored her. She was piqued because Xochi never did that before. Xochi was her passion. He was a loner like her husband. If she’d treat him to a snack, he’d curl up in a corner and eat it alone. But no, Xochi Too has no sense of privacy; he wants her to hold the biscuit while he gnaws it and then watch him licking in between his toes and fingers, and then he expects her to spread her fingers so he can give her a manicure.

— Yuck—she says—Xochi never did that!

Once a vet asked her if she traveled with her dog.

— The whole world over—she bragged.

But then it dawned on her that she was confusing him with Xochi, and since Xochi had traveled the whole world, she left Xochi Too at the kennel because she felt he was too old to travel even though he was a healthy pup, eager to experience jet lag and foreign foods. The vet said:

— Maybe it’s true that Xochi is Xochi Too, but you can’t expect to have the same relationship you had with him in his first life. You’ve both changed so much over the years.

From then on, she began to take Xochi Too on every expedition. The point is you have to learn not to compare. A pig is a pig. And a dog is a dog. The other day you went berserk when I brought the wrong flowers home.

— Because you promised me you would. Why did you promise? You should not promise. Always unfulfilled promises. Jabalí promised me he would get my first book of poetry published.

— I want Visor—I said.

— Visor it will be.

And then he published his own book, not mine, and never told me.

— My mother always said two artists cannot live together. Infectious rivalry.

— I told him:

— Just remember that I am the poet. People should know what they are so they don’t take the places of the people who they are not.

— As if you were the only one.

— That’s exactly what he said.

— Don’t compare Jabalí’s lies with my financial situation. The thanks I get. I did the best I could.

— You promised me $60 roses. I received $5 roses almost dead from the Korean grocer.

— A rose is a rose. The thanks I get. You picked a fight in front of Makiko for nothing because Yoko brought you long-stemmed beauties, thorns and all.

— If you don’t promise, I won’t expect. He stole my publisher. I’m sure he didn’t even take it to Visor. The same with my dissertation. He promised he’d get it published when I finished it, but he didn’t take it anywhere. Did he or didn’t he deserve a beating like the one Repolido gave Cariharta? He was losing in a card game and needed 30 reales to win. But she sent him only 24 reales. And because she did not send him what he expected, he beat her senseless.

— But she did the best she could. She sent him all the money she had.

— But not what he expected.

— Doesn’t justify the beating.

— How do you think he felt, depending on a whore?

— Like the thieving pimp he was.

— You want me to be grateful for withered stubs when I was set on velvety blossoms. Cariharta had the money. Repolido depended on her. That’s why he was so riled, he was depending, and she made him conscious of that by sending him less than he expected.

— That does not excuse his beating or your insults in front of Makiko. You should thank him. He did you a favor.

— Thank him because he broke my spirit.

— Your spirit is not broken.

— It’s crushed.

— Be grateful, you would have been bored always analyzing other people’s work without creating your own.

— I would have been a great critic.

— I would have been a great poet if you didn’t break my spirit.

— Whadaya think?

— You write like me, but you have nothing to say. Not now anyway. Maybe, if you start living vital experiences, maybe later, you’ll become a novelist, but definitely not a poet.

— I couldn’t believe you tattled to your father.

— He said:

— She must see a tidy sum of talent or else she wouldn’t try to bury a beginner. Keep your eye on her and back away from her, ever so slowly.

— Why didn’t you?

— I was mature enough to give you the benefit of the doubt. Although it’s true, I never wrote another verse.

— Then your desire was not genuine.

— Then you were not going to be a critic. Nobody breaks what people are. They can hurt your feelings, yes. Verlaine broke Rimbaud’s heart, but nurtured his poetry by unleashing his emotions.

— He made him despise poetry.

— He broke his heart, not his art.

— And this is why a rose is a rose is a rose. Because there are roses that are not roses. You know when you meet a rose. You know it by its scent. But people don’t know. And that’s the problem. But what bothers me, and this is my dilemma, if I didn’t have an editor picking apart my poems, I would have already finished my book. Because it’s true, you refine the language, but when I have an idea that is not fully developed, you say:

— It doesn’t work, but it’s a great idea.

That’s how you kill my idea. I won’t continue working with it if it doesn’t already work. If it were a great idea, it would work.

— If you work with it, you can make it work.

— All I want to know is whether or not it works.

— Just this paragraph that I’ve had to rewrite from scratch. In other words: palimpsest. What would you do without me? What you’re writing is immature. I make it serious.

— What matures, rots. I’d rather be green. I’m still hopeful that I’m going to be.

— If you say, Never. Listen. I’m not in love. I’m an echo, echoing, I’m in love — in love. I love you — love you.

— It’s torture to have to hear the opposite of what I negate. I say, I don’t love you.

— I say, I love you — love you.

— It breaks a person’s spirit. Don’t you think?

— You think. You think.

— So I always have to hear your back-talk.

— It’s your own voice contradicting you.

— I’m not in love.

— I’m in love — in love. I love you — love you.

— It’s true. Echo is an original. She copies Narcissus’s last words but projects a new meaning. Imagine. Once he emerged from a cold black cloud, arm in arm with another woman, and called my name. Not knowing where the voice was coming from, I looked around, disconcerted, alone as I was, and torn, and used my hands to shield my eyes from a glare in the agonizing haze and looked both ways. Suddenly through the haze, the crowds, and the sunlight, I saw him coming toward me — smiling with swollen bags under his sleepless, drunken eyes — with a tick inside — sun-streaked, crow’s feet, like a map of the world — travails on a flying trapeze of needles twitching, like icicles dripping — and he came over to say:

— Hello. How are you?

My eardrums nearly burst. How am I? The nerve of him. It’s only been a week since we broke up. He, it seemed, was fine indeed.

— Fine indeed, thanks. And yourself?

— Divine.

I stared him down — divine, eh? What’s a cross-eyed fat bitch like her doing with him? Why is she looking at me with that attitude? He must have warned her when he saw me coming:

— That’s her. Keep walking. Right past her.

That’s when the skunk stopped to say hello, and the bulldog did what she was told. She knew who I was. She had listened in on my phone calls, and now she saw me in flesh and blood. Bam-boom-pow-wow-auu, I figured it out — she was the bitch who stole him from me — the one who used to listen in and laugh at my pain. Of course, they were both degenerates. They were naked, and she was sitting on his lap with the phone cord wrapped around her neck like an onyx choker — too bad it didn’t choke her — I swear, I heard her cackling when she saw me begging Jabalí to come back.

— Degenerate.

— You don’t know how many times I had to hear Ingrid Bergman reciting Jean Cocteau’s monologue of a woman talking to her lover on the phone before she commits suicide.

— Jabi gave you that record.

— Yes, until one day, he came home with Edith Piaf and told me he found her at Rizzoli. I later learned it was that bitch who gave it to him. I sensed it.

— How callous.

— He ran off with Edith Piaf and left me with a scratched record of Ingrid Bergman bidding her lover farewell. We never hear his voice, just her desperate responses. With me it was different. I saw his lover seated on his lap, naked, eavesdropping and squealing with pleasure, deep pleasure, more pleasure, the sum of more and more pleasure, thinking she had him eating from her sweaty palm — and they were swilling scotch and soda on the rocks, and I heard the icy ice, his voice choking with pleasure when he said, so easily, with no emotional regret, no sensitivity, cold and distant:

— Blackbirds will come again, but they won’t come back the same.

— But why—I asked—why won’t they come back the same?

— You can’t cross the same river twice. New waters.

In the background I heard the bitch’s laughter, sloshed as she was, with her curly sweaty hair, which I’m sure she hadn’t washed in ages, and her shiny face and her yellow, yellow teeth, and her gums, open wild, I could even see the chambers of her throat with scotch splashing sassy, screaming like a witch and dancing, because he was with her and I was alone and lonely in my solitary room. The question is — why did he want to say hello?

— He wanted you to know he found a new love.

— So why didn’t he say so when he had me on the phone?

— Fear of sabotage.

— So why didn’t he sneak around the corner when he saw me instead of jumping out of the fog like a frog?

— It’s not as if he introduced you.

— Worse, suggestion hurts more.

— You took him by surprise. He didn’t expect to see you, so he called your name out of reflex.

— But why did he look at her at that very moment with a look that said:

— She caught us in the act. Keep walking. Don’t stop. I’ll say hello.

— That’s your jealousy talking.

— No, I swear, it was his bitch. And if he had any balls, he would’ve introduced me to her. What’s wrong with meeting a whore? He was hiding something. His conscience.

— Please, he’s got no shame.

— The look in his eyes. Her look. Her messiness. They were making love minutes before they encountered me. I’m not stupid. She had no makeup on.

— That’s your rage, your jealousy.

— I just want you to know how cruel he was.

— Cruel, but funny. I love the story.

— Look, I’m going to show you how I did it.

— Easy. It’s called hypnotism, and it’s a lack of respect.

— Wait, I thought you believed in my power to enchant.

— I believe it’s a kind of spell.

— Yes, but I’m not taking away their will. I’m giving and giving music to each singer, showing them how to voice the pain in the notes, lowering the catastrophes and feeling them, and being at one with them. And everyone who saw me, believe me, felt the voice of pleasure. All my hairs were on end — I had goose bumps all over.

— Spare me. You were nine years old when you conducted the choir.

— But with such devotion simple, yet sacrificial, knowing the mortality and the wounds, I mean, really knowing what art is about, a mystical experience, recognition of a vocation. And at that age.

— A very normal experience for a very normal child.

— Not any child can sustain that devotion. The choir was flying high. They knew it was no silly game. They followed my hands better than Evy Lucio’s.

— You memorized her gestures.

— Yes, but you have no idea what conducting means to me. I was bored of strumming the guitar, no, it wasn’t the guitar, or the scales, or the piano, or the scores, not even, not even singing. Now that I hear Dulcinea I recognize my style in the way she howls. She arches her neck all the way back until a simple, high-pitched howl comes out of her throat, the dark sound of a stormy gale of wind: Auuuu. Auuuuu. The auuuuuu conveys the gust of abandonment at the same time — calling for help — it voices pure panic in the face of danger — while howling to the infinite and hearing the echoes in the depths.

— Sounds German.

— I am a scream that transcends madness.

— You think I’m gonna believe your feelings are more powerful than mine because you talk in catastrophic combustions. It’s plain intimidation by association. You’re as fragile as, how can I say…

— As you. Let me feel the way I feel. What’s wrong with being in touch with oneself?

— You miss the touch of others because you just don’t listen enough.

— When is it enough? When you destroy everything I feel.

— Go ahead. If I feel it’s important I’ll unplug my ears, take what I need, and disregard the rest as I yawn with tolerant affection.

— Here they come.

— Let me see your grass. Where did you get it?

— From Granma’s garden.

— Just watch. They’re going to think you stole it. I bet you won’t get anything.

— Don’t say that. Granma said I could. And you took it too.

— From my own garden.

— Let’s not fight. Count the presents. Goody two-shoes. I bet I got more.

— Shhh, I hear the camels coming.

— Ay, you left the door open. Take a peek.

— No, I don’t want them to see me. Give me your hand. We’ll go together.

— Close it.

— No, they’re going to see us.

— Close it, dummy. Scaredy-cat.

Slam — bam — auuu!

— My finger. Momma.

Oh, my pinkie was a salamander dangling on the doorway.

— Momma. Momma. What do I do? Auuuw.

I didn’t dare to look at it. Down the stairs came my mother from the second floor, took my finger off the door — blood gushing — as you can imagine — and tied it back on with a handkerchief, soaked in blood, and took me to the hospital where they stitched me back up.

— You were waiting up for the Three Kings.

— I sacrificed my pinkie.

— But it got you a buggy.

— With blinking headlights.

— Every cloud has a silver lining.

— And all good things must come to end.

— And the camels?

— They ate the grass and trampled the place.

Ta-da-dúm

Ta-da-dúm

Ta-da-dúm, dúm, dúm

— How’s your pinkie?

— It’s shorter than the other one.

— Looks the same to me. You’re just bending it.

— If it happened to you, you’d appreciate it more. The day after I got stitches, my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins were all standing around my bed. Waiting for the resurrection of the flesh and the life of my finger. Bruised. Bandaged. Just waiting around. Not knowing what to expect. I sat up in my sleep, singing the Pied Piper of Hamelin and playing his flute:

Ti-ri-ri.

Ti-ri-ri.

Ti-ri-ri.

I had to exercise my fingers. Especially my pinkie:

Ri. Ri. Ri.

— You didn’t see stars?

— It’s not every day you see them, but the pain had a tune of its own. Did I ever tell you the one about the stabbing?

— Oh, not again.

— Chicken. I was jumping rope in the patio corner. Always trying to keep more of a distance from two little girls, Mumi and Mindy, who were playing darts. I called out:

— I can’t believe it. What are you doing playing that macho game?

They were having fun. And the wind was blowing harder. Auuu. Just like Dulcinea.

— Accidents happen when you least expect it—I thought—even in safe little corners of the world.

I had a funny feeling the dart would head my way, but why stop jumping rope.

— I’m happy. I’m not throwing anything at anybody. I’m a pacifist in the war of darts, just jumping my own rope.

And just then, a dart right through the back of my hand. Stabbed. Stabbed. I see the girls coming at me, thrilled by the sight of my blood.

— Let her take it out.

— Don’t you dare. You already stabbed me.

— Gimme my dart.

— Momma. Momma. What do I do? Auuu!

I dropped my head back, looked up at the twinkling stars circling my head, and howled from the pain — Auuuu. Auuuu. But the saltiest little stars stung my eyes on the eve of my brother’s death. They say, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about it, but I can speak from my own experience, that sometimes you can feel grief before it actually comes — a black omen like the bat dream. My boots were muddied, and I was exhausted from having climbed a hill, even more exhausted from having uprooted an enormous cross with my bare hands and having to carry the weight of the cross down the hill, lay it down, and feel relieved. It was a great weight off my shoulders to take the cross down with its weight weighing on me and feeling the anguish of having to bring it all the way down and lay it to rest on the ground. Then I saw two snakes twisting and turning inside my brother’s fish tank, and that’s when Pilo told me he was going to uncover the tank.

— Don’t you dare. You’ll regret it.

Ignoring my warning, he lifted the lid, and out of the fish tank sprang the serpents and slithered under my brother’s bed. I cried:

— Who died? Please, Papa, tell me who died.

My father looked me straight in the eye and said:

— If you want to know what love is, have a son. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.

My brother died that morning. Like that. In a fit of convulsions, fending off death with his fists. Control freak, control, his fist first, in control, his heart bumping out, out, out. His eyes rolling around, ball points — did they know where they were going — they were looking — scaredy-cat — all around. Is this happening to me? Now? Ashamed. Am I dying? His eyeball rolling, upside down. His teeth, his cheeks — earthquake — calm, calm down, it’s all going to pass soon. It’s all going down soon and, and you’ll be Alright. And Alright came freezing his feet — frozen dead — my brother — beastly dead, dead like Dulci.

Cata cata cata plum.

Plum.

Plum.

And still, after all this time, I walk the streets with the wind in my face, feeling the chill of the weather and of death, searching for some trace of my brother’s face in every man’s face to see if I’ll ever see it again. It’s a disappearance.

— And Doña Juanita never appeared to you?

— I couldn’t understand why my cousins, Maruja, the Banker, and Kía, the Happy Widow, had called me to a meeting. What do these pencil pushers want from me? They, on one side of the conference table armed with sharpened pencils and legal pads, and I, on the other side, antsy and empty handed. Between us were my grandmother’s jewels, glimmering under florescent bulbs.

— We’ve called you to this meeting to inform you that you had no right.

— Now that she is dead, they belong to us.

— By right of blood.

— She was our grandmother too.

— No point in defending yourself now.

There was no testament stating the jewels were mine. When Granma died, my mother handed me a Kleenex scrunched in a ball. I opened it and found the jewels wrapped in a note:

— To my favorite granddaughter.

Distressed, I watched each of my cousins scribbling notes while they explained their points of view.

— She spent it all on you.

— It was unfair.

— She made both of us suffer.

— The tables have turned.

And just as the two shrews were about to grab my inheritance, they looked at me horrified. I saw that my hands were no longer my hands. Now they were covered with varicose veins, and my fingernails were polished red, and my knuckles and joints were wrinkled, and my fingers were fat, freckled, and gnarled, and my grip was as strong as iron — hands of an old woman — a prophet — and suddenly I realized that my hands had become my grandmother’s hands.

— Don’t let them snatch away what belongs to you.

I screamed in a voice that wasn’t my own. It was my grandmother’s voice. Just when I thought the furies had defeated me, the mother of all furies, my grandmother, sent them running scared, without saying goodbye, leaving my precious stones on the table, sparkling and untouched. Now listen, come up here.

— Where? On your back?

— Damn, I take a breath of fresh air and feel fine. I swear. I’m not ready for another tragedy, really, who’s ever ready for a tragedy. I grasp, for heaven’s sake, to be caressed by your benevolent you, to be loved so, so much. Oh, I breathe suspicion — my grandmother taught me to suspect — always suspect, even of the sun — she used to tell me — if you’re satisfied, something must be wrong. I’m so comfortable in bed I don’t even want to get dressed to go outside. I click on the TV, content to watch nothing. I read so much. I’m bored to death by Ibsen. Do I act upon the reading? Act upon the character? What fills my brain? Cotton balls and snowballs. Plus the flu, antibiotics, soup, and no exercise. And yet my appetite is here — do I dare to snack? Do I deserve to nap? Everybody dies. Even the ones who accomplish nothing. Do I deserve? Here comes my guilt. For niente a fare. Not for acting an injustice. It’s not an ethical dilemma. It’s a vital existential problem. Indulging my being in waves of distractions. The hot and lazy weather. As if it mattered whether it was day or night. If I don’t wake up — the consciousness of my being alive — time goes by, merry go lucky, quick, a coffee, quick, I have to work, but it’s too hot, and you come and go in the lazy swelter like a train bringing me shoes, seductions, smiles, gossip, temptations, beauty, your sweet face glowing, my Circe, indulging me to forget my mission. What mission? I had it. Now the day pains me and drives me crazy, this railroad inside my house. Thinking about 10 years ago, it will be 10 years since my last work. What have I done in 10 years? When I write checks I do not know 10 years have passed. I write 1983, 1984 because I’m stuck in:

— What do you mean here? Too many nouns. I would take out the ghosts because they have nothing to do with clowns or buffoons.

One life, one work. Work on my present. Do the experiences I live each day, are they — am I — experiencing something that I can feel 10 years have passed? Apart from changing the names of my friends. The problems are the same — nasty, grimy streets, repeating themselves, the same buildings crumbling, the same Broadway shows, movies ad infinitum, parties ad nauseam. You working ad infinitum, me trapped in the house — doing nothing—niente a fare, reading, rocking — what is this word, what is this world — even my nasty moods, the river, the city — and Woody Allen repeating himself — doesn’t he get tired of doing year after year the same old scene.

— Marcello put it aptly. Crisis of inspiration. And what if what you already did is forgotten by you? Even by you?

— It worries me. I don’t feel anything. Touch it. Squeeze my temples. Energize me like Jabi used to.

— Harder?

— Don’t crush my skull. Focus my energies like this.

— Look. Look. That’s the expression of intensity we’re looking for. A hideous pout.

— Don’t you see, when I was at my best, maybe I didn’t look nice, but my head was in top shape. Touch it, right here. Knock it.

— Like knuckles on a door.

— Worse than that because, wait, somebody might answer the door, but here, snivels, who answers? Who?

— Trust me, this is the best you’ve ever written.

— You also thought that slop I wrote three years ago was the best I’ve ever written. I wonder, where is your head? I may feel better, look better, of course, you think profound people look nice, no, intensity deforms, it evolves you. I should never look nice, never, and if I look nice it’s because I don’t have a thorough thought in my heavy head.

— Hang in there.

— Where are you going?

— To the vending machine. Coke? Pineapple juice?

— I could go for spare ribs, but I don’t want you in the streets at this hour. Get Coke and nachos from the lobby. Don’t go. I’m not ready to sleep. How can I face the twilight? What have I done tonight? What right do I have to even nibble those nachos?

— Buridan’s ass starved to death because he could not choose between two equally good smelling bundles of hay.

— Go get nachos.

— You wanted a thought.

— That’s not your thought, it was Mona’s, and before it was Mona’s it was Hannah Arendt’s. It was nice of you to think of it, although I would have preferred it with a nacho in my mouth.

— You’ll starve to death if you don’t decide.

— Par delicatesse, j’ai perdu ma vie.

— You’re Buridan’s ass, not Rimbaud.

— Don’t explain, okay. I don’t need your explanation. I prefer to listen to the words. Think them. If I can apply them to my life, then I understand and I’m happy. Fetch me ribs.

— I would prefer not to. Bartleby.

— Don’t cite your references.

— The owl of Minerva beats its wings at dusk!

— I don’t get it.

— I’m here to present thoughts, not to explain them.

— Nachos.

— Mona took it from Arendt, and Arendt took it from Borges.

— Maybe that’s why it doesn’t appeal to me. He is too conceptual. I prefer the dramatic.

— You’re like the owl of Minerva.

— An old bat?

— Profound people capture youth at dusk.

— I still don’t get it.

— A friend is another self.

— Who said it?

— Who cares?

— I guess it’s my other self.

— Mona.

— Aristotle.

— Wasn’t it you?

— Who?

— My other self.

— Alright already, nachos and a Diet Coke.

— You don’t want to come with me?

— No, I’ll just bat my wings until you get back. It’s irrational, my hate for Borges. Do I have to know who Minerva is to understand that wisdom comes late in life? Why do the wings have to beat at dusk? Wisdom sometimes comes at dawn. Look at Rimbaud. That’s probably why he lost his life.

— Sometimes I wonder if you understand anything.

— I don’t get it like everybody else gets it, but I get it. There’s always an understanding in misunderstanding.

— You have a point there.

— I don’t have anything. Not to contradict you, but I only have eyes for you. Things are disappearing. If you want to see anything, you have to hurry. Trust me. If you don’t want to see anything, you won’t. But, since I have this urgency to see, to touch and be touched, and sometimes even hurt, if I don’t hurry, if somebody — not necessarily you — an accident — takes me by surprise, I see then that that’s what I must write because I can’t be dishonest to what I see. I have to show things, believe it or not, as they are. C’mon, tell me the truth. Now that we’re alone. Mona doesn’t have a clue who I am, does she? C’mon, you can tell me the truth.

— Yes, I think the category of genius still exists.

— But I don’t think like she thinks. I don’t think it’s harder to be a philosopher than to be an artist. Look, she said there are very few philosophers in the history of humanity. I don’t know, every time I hear her talk I become a little nervous. Before, I was so sure. But now, how can I know? Besides, if she doesn’t think I am, who is going to think I am? She is alive. She knows me. And believe me, I try to make my impression. I try to become one. But she just gives me her smiles, shows me her teeth, and I get nervous. And then you just blind me all over, by protecting me so much. I ask you, am I one of them?

— Who cares what she thinks.

— But tell me, count on your fingers, how many philosophers or artists can make a herd of black cows swish their tails as if they were directing what they heard?

— Was somebody with you?

— Why?

— We need proof.

— The cows were there. The trees. The dawn. Music and me.

— It’s not enough. We need a witness who can testify; otherwise, they’ll say the cows were just swatting flies.

— Do you think the cows will do it again if they see you?

— Why don’t we try?

— Do you think I’ll sing with the same voice twice? My voice not only brought the hills to life, but the cows to music, to music. It’s not simple, you know, and yet it’s so simple. So true and pure. Do you think I could sing the same way in front of a stranger like you?

— You could write with me as a chair.

— Do you believe me?

— Mona would have said it’s fantasy, but I’m sure it could happen.

— Pathetic? You wish you were that pathetic. You don’t understand. Listen to the holiness. He’s great souled, and you dare to laugh.

— Mona, I’m not laughing at him.

— You wish.

— He’s got no balls.

— You wish you could write like he sings. Hear, hear when his voice dies softly. It’s a gentle woman. The effort, the effort of dying softly.

— I know. I think he’s funny, or rather, she’s funny.

— Why do you care about that? Insensitive, arrogant.

— I prefer Placido.

— Oh, please, why even compare?

— He’s got balls.

— He’s got balls? You wish you had the Castrato’s balls. I love him most when his voice dissolves. You have no ear for music. You don’t even know what you’re listening to.

— You know, I’m really angry. Now, tell me, did she or didn’t she dare to say that the Castrato was on a higher level than me?

— Is that what you heard?

— She said it, didn’t she?

— Maybe she meant in voice. You do have a deep voice.

— I heard what she said, but she didn’t hear that I said I loved the Castrato. His aahaaaa it’s like, it’s as if he’s drowning or swallowing his tongue.

— Sounds to me like he’s taking it up the ass.

— Yes, yes that’s it. That’s it. I adored his voice. It’s a swollen bird. A bird dying and crying frail, not Niagara Falls, no, no, no. Then, out of the blue, she says:

— You have Picasso’s eyes, intense.

I figure, so I don’t have the Castrato’s soul, but I do have Picasso’s eyes. Not bad. Not bad. And then she says:

— You’re very powerful. That’s probably why Makiko compared your expression to Hannibal the Cannibal in Silence of the Lambs.

Don’t you see a contradiction in all her arguments? I can’t hate her. She loves me. I always thought I was like Picasso. Cow eyes. Mooo. No wonder, the cows loved me. I swear, they were trying to tell me — looking deep into my eyes:

— What a beautiful voice you have.

— What are you doing here?

— How come you understand us so well?

Their big black eyes gazed into mine as I sang:

— with the sound of music

I extended the sound, until the vowels vibrated inside their eardrums, inside their bellies. They were melting, swaying, dripping, almost milking while swinging their tails in harmony.

— with the sound of music

with songs they have sung

for a thousand years

It was magical. The word years started their tails again. They crowded closer, penetrating my eyes, and letting me know that they listened, understood, and most of all, respected with silence and devotion.

— I know I will hear what I’ve heard before.

I was invoking the spirits to come and get me. I knew I would hear music, poetry like I heard before, with the same love mounting over a fountain of passion — water, water — I was thirsty, and the mountains so full of grass, trees, hills so steep, shaggy-hair, knee-deep, and so many rocks and roots and daisies and ripples and nipples, and so many swaying branches and stems and twigs, so little and so brittle — is brittle the word — I mean fragile — and others so strong — and I’m walking through the mud, muddying my sneakers and watching the clouds go down and down until they’re out of sight, cotton balls hanging by threads of light, a bird singing, its perch swinging, cows mooing, and one of them in perfect harmony with the whole universe moos:

— Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Nodding its head up and down, affirming yes because — yes, siree, I like the way yooou sing.

— Yes, we’ll hear it again. Don’t yooou agree?

— I doooo.

— We dooo tooo.

And then they tuned the music out and started grazing again.

— See, they weren’t paying attention after all.

— I thought you believed me.

— Yeah, but they immediately forgot you and went for the grass.

— I made my impression. They paid attention until the sound of music wet their appetite. What better than that? When I left, they were happy, content to eat their grass as if nothing had happened, and I continued singing on my road, and they continued on theirs. I did it my way, and they did it theirs.

— I have the most beautiful dream on the tip of my tongue. Woody Allen appeared in flesh and blood in the middle of a crowd. Everyone was dressed in black tights, and we formed a midnight train.

— Was I there?

— You were the 2nd car and I was the 3rd. The train was circling slowly behind Woody. I was getting impatient. This won’t get us anywhere. I squeezed your waist and shoved you ahead, so instead of chug-chugging in circles, we bolted straight through the crowd, and all of a sudden, it was only Woody, you and me. We were schmoozing. Actually, he was doing all the talking.

— I couldn’t do what I wanted in Husbands and Wives. The director repressed me.

— Lame excuse. He was the director.

— What he meant is that he didn’t think it’s his best work. I agreed.

— I have writer’s block and you’re making it worse. You’re dreaming my fears. You know this isn’t my best work.

— It wasn’t you, it was Woody, and he was relating to me, in confidence, about his work.

— Cut—Woody said.

— Just like the one Paco Pepe had with Fellini.

— You always want to one-up me.

— No, really, he dreamed Mastroianni and Fellini were strolling down La Strada and Fellini was saying:

— Marcellino, pannevino, what’s next? We’ve done it all, but I’m not finished yet.

You should have seen his face — drained, pained. He was wearing Guido’s hat from 8½. The roles were swapped. Paco says Guido had the face of Fellini, Fellini the face of Guido, except that Guido wasn’t suffering like Fellini. Then guess who came hopping out of the blue as a grillo verde?

— What’s a grillo verde?

— Una esperanza.

— Hope?

— A green grillo—that insect that brings good luck.

— A lady bug?

— Is it long and green?

— Oh, you mean a grasshopper.

— And you know what?

— What — what?

— When they examined the grasshopper, it had my face. It was me. Paco Pepe told me I was Fellini’s hope. I was so happy when he told me that dream.

— I didn’t tell mine right. It was epic.

— Go ahead.

— You took all the fun out of it.

— Tell it again. Scenes repeat themselves.

— Why?

— Because you told the story wrong.

— I wasn’t done.

— Go ahead. Start at the World Wide Plaza.

— It wasn’t at the Plaza. It was in front of Rizzoli’s.

— Yes, but there is a fountain in front of the Plaza, so you can make the train run circles around it until we break the neurosis and take us out-out.

— Faith DeRoos, you know who Faith DeRoos is.

— No, why would I?

— She was my Spanish teacher. She took me to the Middle Ages. She appeared to me with her skinny red pumps and frizzy black hair like Cher. We were in England, and you wanted to bring a castle to New York. You were using a huge wooden crane with stone wheels and lots of grappling hooks and claws to lift and move huge rocks and beams.

— So that’s how Stonehenge got here—I thought—I didn’t know they had so much machinery back then.

Faith and I were surrounded by medieval monks who had bangs like the Beatles and red beards masking their whole faces like Paco Pepe. Droves of monks in blue frocks were loading the stone tablets and wooden beams onto a boat. You were in front saying:

— Heave — ho — heave — ho!

— She plans to crown the World Wide Tower with the castle.

— Why didn’t you tell me she was nuts? — Faith said. How is she going to balance a castle on top of that triangle?

But when I looked up, you had already erased the triangle.

— I’ve got a pencil point for that. I’ll use the rest of my tools to draw on top of that big pink tower, so useless and fat. Forces of this rockety earth. I need the past and the present to make it work. No more doubts about myself. I’m making it right now.

The next thing I knew, Faith and I were on a wagon balancing the whole castle on our heads as if we were columns. Fireflies were swarming around us. As the castle rocked back and forth, you hollered:

— High-ho! Giddy-up!

You held out your arms, calling forth a herd of wild horses with black stripes and pink manes, galloping gracefully without braying or neighing, showing the white of their teeth.

Ta-da-dúm.

Ta-da-dúm.

Ta-da-dúm, dúm, dúm.

Then suddenly a road coiled around the World Wide Tower like a spiral staircase. Faith looked at me from the corner of her eye — the castle swaying on our heads — about to collapse — about to crush us to death. The wagon jutted, a loose beam came tumbling down, and the entire structure fell perfectly into place. I knew he was going to use our scene. Bright white lights went on, the crowd dispersed, and the crew started climbing down scaffolds and girders. Woody turned around to see who had changed his pace. He was panting and sticky with his face blotchy red. I was hoping he’d be fascinated. Fellini would’ve fallen in love with my runaway train.

— Who invited you? — he said to you. You ruined the whole scene. I’m not talking to you because I want you in the film. I’m here because I want you to write reviews in Newsweek on my work.

— I don’t know how to write reviews.

— It’s as smooth as nail polish. One of my assistants will teach you. I offered the job first to Leen, but Leen wanted to write about Olmo-Olmo, and I said—Oh, no, no Olmo-Olmo, you can only write about me.

— I told you, I don’t know if I can do the job, but I’ll try. If not, my translator will do it.

— Are you still writing poetry?

— I’m writing poetry disguised as a novel—you offered apologetically.

— There are no disguises here—I said. She’s writing a screenplay.

— A screenplay! — he said. Ya know—he pointed at you—ya know wha-what you are?

— Me? — you shrugged shyly.

— Ya, ya know wha-what you are?

— Wha-what?

— You’re a, you’re a pentagram—then he pointed at me—and you, ya know wha-what you are?

I rolled my tongue again — oops — hit the brakes — let me stop — to see if it stops — oops — it stopped in the roof of my mouth — oops — my tongue’s on a roll, on a rampage, running away…

— Hit the brakes — kick your stirrups.

— Hold your horses — hold your temper.

— Hold your horses — hold your tongue.

— Hold your horses — whooa. Stop.

— Ya know wha-what you are? — he sta-stammered. You’re a, you’re a Yo-Yo BOING!

My head hit the ceiling, and I woke up. Wow — this is night. Silence reigned over the house. All the kids were asleep except me. I looked around the moonlit room and saw my rocking horse in the corner and a glowworm by the door. Somehow I climbed over the bars and landed belly up with my head thudding against the carpet. I crawled downstairs backwards, following the wizardly mumbling coming from the kitchen where my parents were arguing at the table. I stood up at the door and waved:

— Look at me. Look at me.

My mother took one look at me and screamed.

— A gobber!

— I was so scared I scrambled upstairs on all fours and climbed into my sister’s bunk. But I showed them who I am. Notice me now. How I dared down the dark stairs crawling into a fight. Sure they noticed. None of my brothers ran into the traffic of the night and sent my mother into a fright.

— I guess it’s like when you least expect it, in the middle of the night, in the streets, near a dumpster, a mouse appears. You scream, and in a flash the mouse disappears.

— I first appeared in Kalooki.

— You played a seal, didn’t you? I can imagine you balancing a beach ball on your pug nose.

— There were plenty of silly animal tricks, but I landed a role that nobody dared.

— Nobody wanted.

— Kalooki tried to fly like a bird, but never pulled it off. Leopard seal flopped and flounced around, but never left his rock. But me, I crossed the whole ocean, inch by inch, belly-crawling across the rug so gracefully, so quietly nobody noticed I was moving. I not only gave setting to the play, I gave a dwelling to the penguins.

— You let them step on you?

— On the quilt covering me. Such fierce concentration did I exercise that neither squawk nor squeak did part my kisser when Kalooki stepped on my fingertips. It was a humble role, but the power behind the play.

— Dog or woman?

— I didn’t bark or scream. I became what I had to become, an iceberg. Unable to see what the animals were doing, I was minding my own business, the business of crossing the whole ocean without melting, even though I was sweating like an ox. When the curtain fell, I was the one who went the farthest and accomplished the most. They clapped and hooted when I emerged pink and soppy, bowing — here I am. Then I cart-wheeled across the stage.

— It reminds me of when Jabalí and I drove through the mountains and there in front of us was an icy river.

— What’s this got to do with Jabalí?

— He used to fish in that river.

— What’s this got to do with me?

— He sat on a rock and fished with a needle and thread.

— How pathetic.

— How poetic. The fisherman and the iceberg. To know that my pipo saved all those penguins from drowning. What a tender guy. When I looked into Jabi’s eyes, I used to see the green thread of hope until I started feeling I was his rag and he was sticking needles in me.

— Wait ’til you fill my iceberg melting in your ocean.

— I prefer a fire burning in the hearth of my house.

— If you think that’s a good one, ay, bendito, wait until you hear about the time I stepped on a bumble bee. I was happy and gay — skipping barefoot about the farm — away, away, away from my chores — when happiest I felt, zzwapt, rapt.

— Oh, my heel, and now I’m cripple, maimed for life.

Hopping, hobbling, what do I see, a wading pool full of back-swimmers and tadpoles, leaves and twigs, a muddy stew of vegetables, onions, and carrots. My imagination was stewing.

— Soup, soup always makes me feel better.

Schwapt. I swished my foot around in nature’s brew, wiggled my toes into the mud for sting relief. By sunset, the arch of my foot was swollen, itchy, and bulging like a sand-packed balloon, infected by parasites in the rainwater. Sweating, I was thirsty. I saw a hose spurting crystal cold water.

— If I go in the house now—I thought—Mom will take me to the hospital. I’ll sneak in at bedtime. I’ll be fine in the morning.

I stuck the hose in my mouth — and gulp, gulp — down my throat — sploosh — came a glob, a frog — a tender tadpole which I swallowed whole. I dropped the hose, realizing it was scum water my father was siphoning from the pool. A queasiness overcame me. The bugger flip-flopped down the hatch, and away I hopped like a frog.

— What’s a frog like you doing with scorpions?

— Doubting everything about myself.

— You know what the scorpion said to the frog?

— Frog, can I hitch a ride across the river?

— Not with me, scorpion. You’d bite me, and I’d drown.

— Why would I do that? I’d drown with you.

— That’s true. Hop on my cape. Let’s cross the river.

Guess what happened? In the middle of the river, the scorpion bit the frog.

— Why did you bite me? Now we’ll both drown.

— Why did you let me? You know I’m a scorpion. It’s my nature.

That’s what scorpions always do to you, and you always fall for it.

— Last night I dreamed I was blowing air into your asshole, inflating your belly, and you were floating up from the bed, floating up, hitting your head against the ceiling and bouncing on the floor.

— Let me go please. Crack a window.

— You won’t fit through the window. How about the door?

— I can’t decide. I’m a balloon.

— If you let me tie a rope around your ankles, I’ll take you out the elevator. C’mon, atta girl.

— Let go, let go of my foot!

— I can’t let you go without my rope. If you fly away, a plane could hit you. A beak could poke you. And you’d burst. It’s inspiration, honey, inspiration.

Inspiration is like death. You don’t call death. Death calls you.

— I can tempt death and provoke it. It’s a false syllogism full of holes. And what do I do with the holes? I have to fill them up. Or make a bigger hole. To hang another hole inside to be the hole of inspiration. For the wind to blow through. I’m waiting.

— And I’m telling you. Together we rise. Divided we fall. But you’re not going to drop me on the ground after you’ve given me wings. After all, I was minding my own paws, stalking a mouse, ready to pounce, when whoosh — you descended to steal my meal, and I grabbed the mouse, and you grabbed my tail, and up we went in the mountains — there where you feel freeee. The moment you swooped me off my feet, we became one being, a new creature, half feathers, half fur.

— A grim plight for the eagle’s flight.

— She may not soar as high, but she’ll never go hungry with four more feet to help her catch rodents.

— But she can’t fly. Look at her. She’s losing her strength. They’re on their way down.

— Sorry, but I’ve got to drop you.

— I’ll claw your guts out, and we’ll go down together.

— It’s that I can’t fly so high.

— Get used to flying lower. Change your nature. You’re not an eagle anymore. You’re an augury. Unlike any other.

What are you doing at my desk? Wearing my white headband. Writing on my yellow pads. With my gold Mont Blanc. With gum in your mouth. After criticizing me for licking my whiskers like a cat, now you’re doing it too. Monkey see, monkey do. What’ll monkey do next? On the sneaktip. I show you my work so you can edit it, but you hide what you write from me. I can see traces of what you wrote on my paper. You’re so independent. If you’re not imitating my style, then why are you scrawling on the sly? I want you to write, but show it to me.

— I already learned my lesson. You say:

— C’mon, you can trust me. What’s bothering you? Speak your mind. Don’t be like Brascho. He kept everything inside and died of AIDS. You’re going to make yourself sick. Tell me.

Then I tell you, and you go running to your desk to write about my life.

— You’re the sneak. Your father is sick, and I ask you:

— What’s he got? AIDS? Cancer? C’mon, you can tell me.

— Asbestos in his lungs. He is undergoing examinations.

— The results must be in by now.

— They don’t know.

Of course they know. It’s AIDS or cancer. You just don’t want me to know. Privacy. Whispering on the phone. Writing behind my back. And good reasons to write. You’re father is dying. My brother is already kaput. I wish I were suffering. I can’t write without a catalyst. You see, when you threatened to throw yourself out the window — that was something. Or when we were jumping on the bed naked, making the most of it. Or when my brother died.

— Writing has nothing to do with that.

— It does have to do with that. Look what Cezanne said.

— No, don’t go hiding behind Cezanne’s power. Create your own. Like when Xana said you were writing exercises. She said, if I remember correctly:

— Take note, what Van Gogh said is much deeper than you suppose.

— She conveniently forgot to mention that I was the one who recommended that she read Letters to Theo:

— What did Van Gogh say? — I asked Xana.

— Think about it, much deeper. When does a sketch end and when does the work begin?

— I don’t do sketches, Xana. I know what a sketch is. A sketch is less than reality. The work never. You know, there is a big difference. A sketch is a scribble.

— A bit of humility—you said to me. Let Xana talk.

Traitor, why did you let her win?

— All I said was:

— Let her talk.

— Let her talk. Sure, and if she had a gun, you’d say:

— Let her shoot.

My insecurity, my pride, my work — so much work for what?

— She said:

— The future is yours.

— And I should have answered:

— What future? What future? If there is no present, there is no future. Someday, you’ll establish your authority not by taking Van Gogh out of context, but by sending me into orbit.

— She messed with your mind.

— She killed my desire to keep writing.

— Evil eye.

— She watched me drown with Elena Caridad, Giuseppe Impastato, and Nancy Díaz. Three years into the Novel of Gemma Sender, and you never told me the truth. You let me show it to Paco Pepe, and it was he who pronounced it dead. Now Xana, knowing my grief, tries to convince me that this book is sinking like Atlantis and the famous ship, oh, I forgot the name of it, my memory is capsizing.

— Xana is right—said Paco Pepe. There are scribbles that are works of art. When does the work begin? When does the miracle occur?

— And what about Mona? — I asked. Are hers sketches too?

— Yes, they are—replied Paco Pepe.

— And what about my new project? — I asked Xana defenseless, dreading her answer with all my heart.

— It lacks rhythm.

— Rhythm—I said, stunned.

— Ay, bendito, it’s an aperture to a new world. And I see it as a beginning.

Then she gave me a kiss. Ay, bendito. A sketch? I know what a sketch is. A repentance. It would mean another flop in my life with you. But I don’t think it is. What do you think?

— What does Mishy think?

— That it’s academic.

— You see, and she didn’t mention Van Gogh.

— She didn’t have to. She is French. She has the authority of the revolution or je ne sais pas quoi.

— Truly, with friends like that.

— Who needs enemies. I can’t trust my friends, and my apprentice less. I just went to see the psychic, and she has confirmed my suspicions. What was I dreaming — believing in you.

— What’s his sign?

— Gemini.

— He loves you more than you love him.

— He adores me.

— You’re going to leave him. You’ve left them all.

— Aha, there you go. And you believe that witch.

— Now you’re fuller. But last March or April I saw you drained by doubt and unemployment. You’d like to have a job. Not to depend on anyone.

— I don’t want a job.

— What do you think about Damian?

— What do you think about my new book?

— I prefer the last one. You’ve got a way to go on this one. The structure is faulty.

— Damian can go to hell.

— To heaven, heaven, never to hell. Yours is 60 years old, right? And he’s either a doctor or a lawyer.

— A lawyer.

— Since when am I a lawyer?

— You could have been. Psychics reveal signs — you can’t intimidate them. I have to agree so she can keep giving me more clues. She said I’m empty. Lack of inspiration. Lack of love. Depending on your mush and gruel. And that’s why Empire of Dreams was better. I was an island unto myself.

— Has she read any of your books?

— She doesn’t need to read them. Sharpened sense of smell like bloodhounds. She knew Geminis cannot be trusted. And she was right. I begged you not to tell Rey and Leen that Makiko was trying to break them up. Don’t you know how superstitious they are?

— I don’t want you so close anymore.

— Why?

— All my friends are very serious people. You are not.

— Why? What have I done?

— Insidious gossip.

— What gossip?

— What’s this about Makiko pickling Leen’s picture under the sink?

My eyes blinked. I was accused of your gossip. I couldn’t defend myself.

— Why not?

— I can’t treason you. I should have said:

— Come on, Rey, I don’t know anything about pickled peppers.

But the fact was that I knew about her black magic. I thought it was rotten of Makiko, but I was never going to tell Leen.

— I wanted her to know. So did you. You even said:

— If Leen only knew. I wouldn’t want to be buried in salt.

— Where is your face when you talk to Makiko?

— What are you worried about? Makiko has no power.

— I was watching you whispering to Leen. What is he doing? I was a little jealous. Now, I lost three friends.

— You lost them, I’m sorry.

— With that smile.

— I’m sorry.

— You wouldn’t have to be sorry if you would curb your tongue. You’re going to die through your mouth like a fish.

— So what’s mine here?

— Nothing. Nothing here is yours.

— I wonder. Nothing here is mine.

— Nothing here is yours. It’s not your house.

— Nothing here is mine.

— Keep repeating.

— Ask Grita.

— Screw Grita.

— When we moved, you know what she said:

— How many rooms?

— Two.

— Two for her, I bet. You’ll have the walk-in closet.

— Shall I quote my mother?

— Go ahead, she loves me.

— I’m tired of third parties who have bones to pick.

— She said, she said:

— Aren’t you glad she isn’t here?

— Who?

— You know who.

She was relieved you stood us up. She said you would have called us sheep heads.

— Frivolous bitch. I can’t get her squealy giggle out of my ears.

— She thinks your laugh is too deep.

— And you dare to tell me what she thinks. If your mouth weren’t so big you’d choke on that long, forked tongue of yours. If it weren’t for you, I would’ve written it just fine.

— I was lying quietly in bed.

— I told you:

— Get the fuck out!

You know what it does to my mind. In the middle of a sentence. I heard the bathroom door. Mumbling. Splashing. I was curious. I had to know what you were doing. Of all times to wash your socks. I couldn’t concentrate.

— Get the fuck out!

— I got the fuck out.

— I was flustered by Xana, Paco Pepe, Leen, Rey, you, and Mona.

— You forgot Jabalí.

— Never. I have you to blame now, and I shouldn’t have to feel guilty because you left. So what, I felt good, I could write, and bad, too silent. It was coming out wrong, and I was feeling lousy. Not guilty. Pissed. No explanation. Okay. I hate excuses. It’s a trap. There’s no way out.

— I walk into the bathroom and find you there.

— No, I can’t, I can’t — not with the scab or the toys or the whims. Three years wasted on the imposter nun, the messenger of God, and the bag lady and now this. I’m a failure, but you can’t say my intentions weren’t noble — to fly to the sun — with my cardboard wings — flapping in the air — and the dream against the ground.

You lying there on your back with your kika sprawled open, curly and black. I’d never seen you wallow in the depths of such despair, rocking back and forth — your navel a well of tears — your sunken, defeated eyes smeared with mascara, blank, but fixed — staring at the leaking faucet.

— Don’t you realize. What it means. To go the distance and find nothing. No, it’s still not it, no, no.

— Start over.

— Why keep pushing? Why delude myself?

And suddenly I look at the toilet — there are three balls of pooh bobbing in a chain. I look at them. I look at you.

— Look, kika, look at this lil’ pooh.

— No, no.

— Rub-ba-dub-dub,

three poohs in a tub.

— No, no I can’t.

— Thrilled, I double over laughing, my belly aches and grumbles inside as my pooh becomes a nursery rhyme. It must be love — it doesn’t gross him out. I sit up and watch you drop it back into the bowl, splash. I wrap my arms around you.

— You think it’ll be okay?

— It’s fine. Let it simmer. Don’t be impatient. Look what happened to Orpheus. He couldn’t help himself and lost her forever.

— I toss my green coat over your body, cold and naked.

— The tiles left a grid on your butt.

— Not on my butt, in my head.

— And later I felt focused, deeply centered in the same depths since I found myself with you — so hot and cold — so estranged from myself — sitting naked on the wooden chair with my breasts against the edge of the desk, distracted, scratching a dry white scab and rolling it between my fingers:

I think

one

write

two

this fragment

three

one

two

and three.

And as my chin drops, my arm starts moving, writing these lines — my stomach growls — a bubble of gas stops to hesitate — it doesn’t know which way to go — it’s got a mind of its own — as anyone out of control knows — there is always a moment of hesitation in the belly walls:

Plop-plop,

Fizz-fizz,

Oh what a relief it is!

Juan, Pedro, gratitude,

The one who farted.

Must be you!

Ploom!

It’s better to fart

and feel the shame

than hold the fart

and feel the pain!

So wherever I may be,

I let my wind pass free!

Ploom!

And that reminds me of:

— Where is Thumb-kin?

Where is Thumb-kin?

— Here I am!

Here I am!

They always made me laugh even though I knew they were teasing me.

— Who?

— My mother and Brascho:

— Where is Pinkie?

Where is Pinkie?

— Here I am!

Here I am!

Telling me where to stick my finger when I didn’t feel like playing. Controlling my moods. And you handing me my own pooh as if it were a bonbon. I had to laugh, I couldn’t help it. It was as visceral as the meltdown. And that’s exactly what I love about you, the rash and unexpected, distracting me from myself. I’m going to take him. I need him badly.

— What an annoying baby. All he does is piss and cry.

— But I need him in a different way. He reminds me of the piglet that Alice in Wonderland carries in her arms. She thinks it’s a baby. With a snout. That for me is my Rocamadour. I have to steal him from Hopscotch. He’s mine. Mine.

— He’s dead.

— Doesn’t matter. He’s mine. An offering to my altar of writers. I’m going to take Dulcinea in my arms, and you, Rocamadour.

— A piglet and a dog. Both dead.

— No, alive, alive in memory. In the fire of live illusions.

Rock-a-bye baby

On the tree top,

When the wind blows

The cradle will rock.

I feel the wind swaying me away, away, away. My head is blowing, growing — on the verge of exploding. I feel happy — so, so very happy. I hear my friends laughing. Inspiring the wind, I inspire myself. I want to inspire myself. Hang in there. Let me see. What else can I do?

Give me an orgasm that runs through my channels and makes me a fountain, a sunset, a wave, a tunnel, a bridge, and a cow.

Mooooooo.

Give me an organism that plays my blacks and whites, quavers, and even the tacks and nails I un-nail — don’t they sound like the root of…I mean, every wonder has a name, even when I wonder my name. What else? Ah. What.

It all depends on how the intonation, even the excitement. How can I inspire you? How can you — mooooo — inspire me? Nothing can be inside the heaven — bola suave — master — masturbation — I write it — how else — I sing bo-o-la — kneading a ball of dough, a bun, a canteen in the nest egg of the nightingale — a common denominator — flowing around — going around nonstop — stunned speechless — the Milkmaid of Bordeaux — after the Black Paintings

down

down

down

I feel an up

merry-go-round

you drive me crazy

do-re-mi-fa-ti-do

you love me like I love you,

myself is you, my you is me, yo

my yo is myself, you my Yo-Yo Boing!

I hit the mountain of your sex,

rubbed it against mine — rubbing around—

mounting heavily — double-di-lu-lu-bu-ru

and I understood, disturbed, but pleased,

rest in peace, mine be, god be, the heavens, mountain it — mounting in it, it comes around — again — I know who it is. It’s him. The meow, meow, meow sounds the same as his meow, meow, meow. I know him, do I love him, I don’t know. He makes me be my happy, be myself, makes me feel do-re

mi-fa-so-la-ti-do

nonstop — double double du

bon-bon

face-to-face

with immortality

the white bunny spot

of the wooly lamb

between the mounds

of my sex wet

enticing delighting exciting me

and all the red, flushed with a touch

so touched in the red rock, blushed

red and white notes and the quaver

stained in black ink

in the red, touched in the middle

traced by the thumb

the pinkie in front

if it feels it in front

zappa — plsssfsht

and I stay with you

because I can’t feel

what I feel with you

when I have it without you

I feel less myself

with you

I myself

alone

for you

darumbamba

darumbamba

bum

plum

uum

Did you get it all down?

— I missed a few points.

— So what would happen if I go blind?

— If you go blind, then it’s over, baby, all over.

— Why, ah, why. If Milton wrote when he was blind. And Borges wrote. And they say Homer was blind. It’s memory, not sight that matters. As long as I have you to transcribe my inspiration.

— The wind blew too fast.

— How is it that I can capture the wind?

— Then why didn’t you write it down?

— You have to practice. You weren’t even close to what I said.

— I was editing your repetition, your mispronunciation.

— You have no right to transform my words, especially when I am dictating what I’m hearing from the blind. Just write every word I say. That’s kairós. That’s what I do. I’m just repeating what I hear. What authority do I have? None. Whatsoever. And now that I have you, less. Now I can lie down like the dead and wait ’til you make the writing work. The misspellings and the nuances, after all, what do I care, I see in them your future trademarks. You are going to be, by all means, an original.

— Don’t steal my thunder — Mona warned. But I had already taken her phrase:

arrested

arrested

libido

and made it mine. She had explained that arrested meant delayed, retarded, but I thought arrested, like confined, imprisoned, like halt, you’re under arrest. She tossed and turned all night, worried that I had stolen her thunder, and literally I had. I stole her thunder and her arrested libido.

— And think of all the stories you swiped from me.

— Why should I have to defend my thunder? Ask Dalí how many thunders he stole from Lorca and Buñuel from Dalí and Lorca. And Picasso from we don’t even know how many, he himself a thunder thought no credits were to be given to nobody. He himself his own thunder became a creditor with so many debts. And here you are telling me stories, knowing that I’m going to swipe them.

— Stop picking your toes.

— There is plenty of cloth to be cut. If it starts bleeding and makes a hole like a, like a, like a cave, it excites me even more. Go on.

— Let me tell you about what happened to a young man who married a very wild, unruly wife. Everybody, including her own father, begs him not to marry her. At the wedding, they pray for the poor sap’s life.

— He’s a lazy gold digger. She’ll bury him alive.

On the wedding night, hubby asks his dog for a glass of water.

— Dulci.

— No, the dog acts more like Otti, cocks his head and stares at him.

— Hey, you, mutt, I said I want a glass of water.

Dog does nothing, guy pulls out sword, whack, off with the dog’s head.

— Hey, you, pussy, water, now.

Not a meow. Hubby grabs the cat by the tail and cracks his furry lil’ head open against the door. Horse and wife look at each other, apprehensive, of course. Wife thinks:

— Nah, not his horse, he wouldn’t kill Stud.

It’s like blowing up your own car, uninsured that is. Slowly, he paces toward his horse, and with his bloody hands, he whacks, whacks, whacks the head off his own bloody horse. He turns to his wife.

— Water.

— Immediately, water, here.

— Supper.

— Immediately, supper, exquisite, delicious, here.

— Now, hussy, get to work. I’m going to bed. Don’t disrupt my sleep.

The honeymoon is red dead silent. By daybreak the whole town is stunned to see the wretch obedient, especially her father, who runs home and stabs a rooster in front of his wife.

— Too late, you ol’ fart. Beheading a herd of horses would do you no good. We know each other too well.

Style is set from the start. Do I have to explain?

— This one is about the structure of fantasy:

events — what happened

laws — how it happened

origins — where it came from

— I guess from Songs of Life and Hope:

And not knowing where we’re going

Or where we come from

Illustrious bountiful races. From Darío comes my most “bountiful U.” At least I know, but who knows.

— There’s this fine fellow, Dr. Z, who was in love with a little girl named Amelia. After globe-trotting in quest of truth and knowledge, he returns to Buenos Aires and visits her house thirty, forty years later. Potbellied and bald, the good doctor finds Amelia’s sisters wrinkled and gray, shrouded in an aura of mourning. He fears Amelia must be dead.

— Ouch!

— First your big toe, now your pinkie. Get some toilet paper before you stain the sheets.

— Go on. Auu, it hurts.

— Clean it.

— It already soaked through.

— Clean it.

— Go on.

— In frolics a little girl, the spitting image of Amelia. First, Dr. Z thinks it is her daughter, but no, it is Amelia, the very girl who stole his thunder. She stayed the same. Innocence is not lost.

— Ask Proust. In Search of Lost Time.

— Darío says the opposite. She never grew up.

— Maybe, in his mind’s eye, he saw her as a little girl again although she was older, although time had passed — because he felt the same relentless passion towards her. And she acted the same way. To repeat the scene.

— Magic realism. One of the ways of stopping time.

Realism — time runs and people age.

Magic — time stops and people stay the same.

Darío called it looooove.

— I call it tunder.

— Repeat after me: thunder. The tongue behind your teeth: Th-under.

— Don’t steal my th-thunder. I really love the phrase. As if a thunder could be stolen from the map of the universe. As far as I know, it’s a phenomenological thunder.

— Okay, but she thinks it is hers and you are using it as yours.

— I’m reproducing her noise.

— It sounds different.

— So?

— As I said, you’re stealing the language.

— Ostriker.

— Frozen serpents, she said.

— I can say whatever I want.

— Where are you from?

— The world.

— Russian?

— How did you know?

— I could have sworn you were from one of the islands. I’m from Jamaica. I was the #1 runner in my country. A hero. I ran in the Olympics. I went the distance, but coming from a small island, I didn’t have a chance.

— Don’t blame your island. Napoleon conquered the world, and he was from a colony.

— So you’re from the islands.

— I was once a tennis champion, but I quit. No more tennis. Now I write poetry.

— Once a champ, always a champ.

— Yes, once you learn to be consistent — to endure — not to lose hope or patience. I had a lover who told me that I’m intense but of short duration. He underestimated my stamina.

— Why must you bring Jabalí into everything?

— I was in a park with a bunch of friends at night. And we were goofing around, my friends and I. Some fellows came by, and we started shaking branches, furiously, cackling and screeching like the devil.

— Ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca!

Off they scrambled in pursuit of mercy. Another fellow came, and we did the same, and gone was he in a cloud of dust. Next came a family. The proud father walked ahead, and behind him the mother with three small children. We thought for a second that maybe we should not frighten the little ones, but we could not help ourselves.

— Ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca!

The man bolted, coward, but the woman, brave woman, did not run, she stopped — gathered one, two, three crying children and then ran off. Where was the father? Gone. It showed me how much stronger women are.

— Some and some not.

— Maternal instinct.

— Some and some not.

— My mother did everything for me.

— I bet she didn’t do everything for your sisters.

— True.

— You know why? Because when women have sons, they think it’s their turn to be men. Or to exercise power over these men. Have you thought about your sisters? I bet they were as talented as you are. Of course, you exalt the courage of mothers, like yours, she invested everything she had in you.

— You look like Giulietta Masina. I heard she died. She couldn’t last without Fellini.

— I am their daughter.

— They had no children.

— If they had, it would have been me. It’s so tragic that we should be born of the wrong parents.

— You never know. You might have ended up with a terrible complex like Victor Hugo’s daughter.

— Cold, callous children of Republicans, that is what they are. What we have in common is that we are misplaced in this bloody country. Because of a tragic love affair, we have to teach in these dreadful places where there are no friendships, my darling. We are always at a loss. We were meant for the theater, my darling. In England, I have always told Sarah, there is no dreadful competition among students for grades like those cold, callous children of Republicans who have an accident, and the only one wounded is my Sarah, and they are afraid that I will sue them.

— You should sue them.

— I should sue them, reckless, cold, callous children of Republicans.

— Not just Republicans, Americans.

— Is that what you have found, my darling? I have always told Sarah, and that is what you have found, my darling, reckless, cold, and callous.

— She is the most poetic human being.

— With a tragic sense of reality.

— We are misplaced. They did not even ring me to tell me what they did to my daughter. A tragic twist of fate. Clorox, I will never forget opening night in Paris, when the leading man drank champagne from the glass in his hand, and cried: Clorox! Then I swallowed, and cried: Clorox! That was the twisted night of my fate.

— Baudelaire would have fallen in love with you.

— No, he liked helpless, weak women.

— But you are helpless. Bring Sarah’s X-rays to a specialist in New York and see if her bones are healing properly.

— I’m a widow — no compassion for a widow. They write letters to the driver, those reckless runts.

— Thank God nothing happened to you, Marla.

No mention of Sarah, who is in a body cast. Now, what type of friends are they? No manners, no continuity.

— Thank God nothing happened to you, Marla.

And their parents are telling them shoo-shoo away from Sarah, she might sue.

— You should sue. Hospitals will suck you dry. If Marla ran the red light, Marla should be held accountable. That is what insurance policies are for.

— In Oxford nothing like this would happen. Wolves, instead of seeing a beautiful girl, they see blood, meat. Damned Americans, I cannot believe we created this monster.

— Well, as Goya said, the dream of reason creates monsters.

— And science created Frankenstein. How much longer will I be able to stand this bloody country without collapsing? I’m a widow. Often, I often wonder, what would become of her without me.

— I would take care of her.

— And who will take care of you? All she longs for is continuity, friendship. Sarah is half British, her manners — and it is clearly a matter of manners — for we are the makers of manners. Often, I often wonder, how can manners exist in a country without continuity?

— They can’t.

— So that is what you have found, my darling. Instead of appreciating beauty, courage, intelligence, they drool for blood. I must carry her back to her roots. Although she plans to bring the Globe Theater to this cold, callous country where I have rooted myself for an ill-fated roll of the dice. That is what we have in common. We are misplaced. It is all so frightful, so fragile. My darling, how can we live?

— It’s all hanging by a thread.

— By a single thread. How do we bear such burdens?

— Mira, chipi, again, they did it to us again. The red stamp. 15 % gratuities included.

— Why is the tip included on the bill?

— I’m sorry, I thought you were tourists.

— Tell me, where am I from?

— I’m sorry. I really don’t know.

— New York.

— You were speaking Spanish.

— New York speaks Spanish. I want to know what is the criteria for determining who are tourists.

— It’s up to each waiter. We’re bound to offend some people.

— Who? You’re not worried about offending Spanish-speaking people. Everybody gets the red stamp, or nobody. I’ll write to the New York Times about this establishment.

— Our apologies. We’ll return the tip.

— That’s right, missy, no tip because of the discriminatory policies.

— Our apologies. Cognac on the house.

— You’re always yackity-yacking about discrimination and now you’re suddenly at a loss for words?

— Yes, because you’re cheap. It’s discrimination against stinginess. Look how you’re dressed. Tattered jeans and sweat socks. Have a sense of reality. We shared a dish.

— It’s not a matter of money. I’m a very generous tipper.

— At least now we get cognac. You were counting pennies, and I was hiding my face. I don’t have makeup on. What if somebody recognizes me? That’s why I kept quiet. If I were beautiful today, I would have defended you.

— Defended me? I was defending you. It was because of your accent. They discriminate against Hispanics. Face it, you know it exists, but when someone slaps your face, you freeze and fall mute. And when there is no problem, you create one. I thought, so what? It’s true, you don’t like to be on committees.

— But Crespo also told Arnaldo she doesn’t like committees either, but she goes. You see the bias against me. She is allowed to say she doesn’t like them, but she won’t hire me because I don’t like them. If she doesn’t want to be like me, why does she have to say she is like me? I’m good — she says — I don’t like committees, but I have to go so I go. An angel on one shoulder, a devil on the other. Inbetweenies kill me. If I don’t like them, I won’t go.

— You can’t admit that you won’t go.

— Don’t shake my confidence.

— I know you’ll say it wrong.

— Not if you write it down. I’ll read it to Migdalia on the phone.

— How can you talk about the search committee as an outside evaluation when you and Crespo are the search committee?

— Okay, who told you they are the search committee?

— Vox populi. Fuenteovejuna.

— Then you have a case.

— I want a political orgasm. I won’t get it by talking to Migdalia. Let’s whop them one now before they cover their asses. I’ll write a memo to the provost and the president. They’re blatant liars. They said:

— It’s the outside search committee who rejected you. Crespo and I want you, but our hands are tied.

Outside search committee, my ass. They are the search committee, but they want to sound objective.

— Don’t be defensive.

— Who is going to defend me, you?

— Threaten Migdalia:

— But Migdalia, it’s unprofessional of Crespo to spread vicious lies about me at other universities. My first reaction was to file a grievance with the provost, but then I thought, no it couldn’t be, I’ve opened my doors to both of you, invited you into my home. Perhaps Crespo is projecting her own dislike of committees onto me.

— Yes, she said, I don’t like them either, but I go. Bullshit! I’ll tell her:

— You love committees. They make you feel important. Part of a community. Where did you get that defamation? Why do you discriminate against me? Because I make fun of your committees? But I like to come, I tell you that. I love political orgasms. So, yes, I will serve on your committees. If I can get a political orgasm. Why not, ah, why not?

— Multiculturalism is dead; the fact that we teach it in universities is proof enough. What about the GAP adds, featuring Asian, African, gay models. It’s not an African in African garb. It’s just an African model. It’s all GAP. That’s what is killing Europe. Unification in the name of marketing. To think all the great diversity of cheese in France is gone, long gone. Maybe they had 5,000 cheeses, now they have 500 because the specialty brie maker cannot compete, my darling, because in order to survive he must unify with all the other little brie makers to mass-market one cheese to export to all of Europe, and the unification kills diversity of flavors and languages, just like McDonald’s is cutting down the rain forests in Brazil for the sake of raising hamburger meat—50, 80 indigenous languages a day drop off the face of the earth. For the sake of hamburgers. Why go to France if I have to carry a computer that spies on me, blinking e-mail messages throughout the night, telephones, faxes, and computers tracking my every breath.

— You love France.

— We go way back.

— I always thought of France as England’s wife. Germany’s tragedy was that it married Italy instead of Spain. Spain would have been the perfect match for Germany. Anti-Semitism began in Spain.

— My darling, the most racist country in Europe is France. They measured 2,000, 3,000 skulls a day in the name of white supremacy.

— I thought those were the Germans.

— No, my darling, the Germans hurried harm along with statistics.

— And the British?

— We are too careless, my darling, to even balance our checkbooks. We would not trouble ourselves with statistics. Every Frenchman, on the other hand, is an accountant. When I was studying in Paris, my landlord measured the soap with a string and charged me for every millimeter of soap I used. And when the refugees were leaving France, dying of thirst, the French lined up at the borders, offering them glasses of water, but when they were about to drink the water, the bloody bastards charged them. If they had no money, they would have no water. The only thing left in France is the mime.

— And that’s more than you can say for England.

— Albeit, I would have never been seduced by England. That is why I escaped to France when I was 15 years old. I fell in love with Paris. London grows on one, but one does not fall in love with London. London does not want anyone to fall in love with it.

— That’s why I always say England and France are spouses. But don’t deny me that the British are not racist. You obliterated the Indians.

— Those were the Puritan fanatics that England rejected. The harmless ones stayed home. We said, go fanatics, go to the wilderness of monkeys. And look at the mess they created. You call that multiculturalism. They obliterated the Indians. And they continue to do so in the name of Big Mac. 80, 90 languages a day. Poof. Gone. Look at Toni Morrison, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Amy Tan writing about their lost culture, long dead. No wonder the bloody Americans celebrate them because now they are no longer black or Chinese, they’re all GAP. 50 years ago this was unheard of. American soccer players on the Brazilian team. French players on the British team. They sell themselves to the highest bidder. Is that diversity? No, now all the teams are the same!

— And then Ian, with the gap between his teeth, said to me:

— Can you picture Homer banging Kinney in Madrid? Repulsive, isn’t it. I like to picture Kinney bent over the kitchen sink in flannel slippers. How do you like to picture it?

— I prefer not to—I said.

And then, Kinney brings me back a lesbo porn magazine. Joanie told me to report it to personnel — it’s sexual harassment.

— Kinney—I said—I’m not a lesbian.

— I didn’t say you were—he laughed—but you can’t deny you’re a raving feminist. Ian and I thought this magazine would help you find yourself.

— No, no thank you—I answered, and Joanie told me:

— File a grievance. I’ll testify I saw the magazine.

— But I don’t know, what can happen to you. You gave Russell my book and pasted a Playboy pinup inside.

— I was teasing my Russell. It’s not the same. Did I fire anybody with only two weeks’ pay, two weeks before Christmas? It is insane, inhumane, don’t you see? If the guy hates New York, why is he the head of the New York practice? Firing people with only two weeks’ pay while he spends five grand on a Christmas party after Mr. Madonna sent a memo to the entire staff saying there should be no Christmas party this year and then he spends the rest of what would be my compensation on Mont Blanc pens for all the clients, kiss-ass, but he wouldn’t even lend his secretary a Bic. I have a major problem with that. And when Kinney told me:

— Come to the Village with me and my boyfriend Homer. We would like you to be frank about your sexual preference. Why don’t you wear skirts to work?

— I wear them—I said—in the summer. And if you keep harassing me, I’ll sue you and the firm for sexual harassment.

Ian used to bellow from one hall to the other:

— Get me more coffee!

Is that a way to treat your secretary? Nothing is ever enough.

— And it should never be enough. If they can keep pulling bunnies out of your hat. There was a moment when you should have put your foot down.

— I tried to transfer to another unit, but they were scared I would squeal. I saw what they were doing with the drug addict.

— A double standard — treating you so bad while the coke-head was snorting nose-candy off the desk — dick privilege, coño, what an injustice.

— And you remember when they wanted to fire Joanie. They told me to testify that she distracts other secretaries by talking on the phone all day.

— No way—I said—she’s a typist. All she has to do is type. She can talk on the phone as long as there are no typos.

I am planning to tell La China:

— Keep trying to be white, they will always see you as yellow, and someday, they’ll fire you too, and you deserve it.

And Charlie, who said:

— What an unfortunate case! Why didn’t anyone tell me she was a perfect employee? I would have saved her job.

Why didn’t he check my personnel file himself? I have a problem with that. I told him:

— Promise me you will investigate their files. They have a long history of harassing women. I’m not the first.

— The firm takes your allegations very seriously. Promise to come to the office tomorrow and put them in writing.

They raped my spirit. How will I put that in writing? I’d like to rip my blouse wide open and scream:

— I’m a woman! Sexual harassment!

— And that’s precisely what I love about Mishy. I mean, during the LA race riots, before the looting and the shooting had even stopped, when everything was hot and sticky in New York, she jumped right into a subway mugging and defended an old Mexican from four black guys.

— Give us everything you got, or else we’ll turn you in to La Imigra. We know you don’t have papers.

While they were taking his mickeycharras, Mishy, Don Quixote de la Mishy, went over to the black guys and said:

— Why don’t you steal from the rich? Exploiting someone poorer than you. You know what you are.

— You, fucking bitch, shut up, or I’ll slit your throat.

— Coward! Why are you stealing from this man who is more fucked over than you? Go to Saks Fifth Avenue.

— You shut up.

— You shut up. What’s he done to you? He is just trying to earn his daily bread.

— You racist bitch.

— You fascist bastard.

— Fuck you, maaaan.

— Fuck you.

— Don’t point at me.

— Fuck you, man. Fuck, and now I’m really fucking mad, you better fucking move your fucking ass.

— Fuck you.

— Fuck, fuck you.

— Fuck, fuck you.

— Fuck you — you hear me, I said, fuck youuuuu. I mean you, fuck. Fuck you, maaaan.

— Did they smack her?

— No, they jumped the turnstile with the old man’s goods.

— I’m gonna say it happened to me but I didn’t let them walk off with the goods. Mishy’s ending is rather dismal.

— If you want to tell Makiko that’s fine, but it’s mine at Suzana’s tonight. You weren’t there. I took the thugs on myself.

— It’s funnier if you say I was there looking invisible. Five guys against one woman and her cowardly mate.

— Is it true? — they’ll say. I’ll look sheepish.

— I couldn’t believe it myself and I was there.

— Isn’t that something?

— Then I’ll laugh:

— What?

— Did you really say that?

— I would have liked to.

— But did you?

— They’ll think you are a danger to society.

— I was just teaching them a lesson.

— You’re encouraging them to steal so long as they’re not stealing from the poor, but look whom you’re stealing from.

— From Mishy. And Mishy is teaching them whom to steal from. I want to play the hero tonight.

— When you’re really a cheater. You’re a riot.

— Maybe it’s true, a riot, yes, a riot, not bad, next time, a riot, I’ll say I started a riot. I’m a bullshitter.

— Oh fuck, look who is here, Mishy. Did you know she was coming tonight?

— I’m very glad to have met you. We can continue talking later.

— You’re leaving me hanging.

— Later. We can talk later. I have to go. My translator. The poetry reading. I’m nervous.

— What happened to the black guys?

— What black guys?

— Spike Lee. We were talking about Malcolm X.

— Like I wouldn’t notice she stole my story. And turning red like that. After making me repeat it more than three times on the phone. Freakin’ Rican still gets it wrong.

— Tonight we are going to have an enchanting evening. We will hear Darsha sing two arias from La Bohème, Acts III and IV. The Grunschlag sisters will accompany her on the piano. Then, we’ll have some poetry.

— I hope she is not planning on reading half of her book again.

— I was thinking more along the lines of a sonnet or two before dinner.

— Suzana, you cannot mix opera and salsa. I cannot sing in an atmosphere where hips are swinging. And now with this cat. I’m allergic to cats. Red welts will spread over my face, and I’ll start sniffing.

— It’s not a cat, it’s a rabbit. I have her on a leash. I love animals. I don’t have work right now. I need a job badly. My parents will stop sending me money from Japan. The last $200 they sent me, I saw this rabbit, and bought it on impulse. I’m such a pendeja with money. When I see something I like I buy it. So I’m always broke.

— What’s its name?

— Brascho. When I saw this rabbit, I knew she was the reincarnation of Brascho. I was in love with him. He was a beautiful maricón. I must have been a maricón in another life. That’s why I’m called Okage, the rice that sticks to the bottom of the pot, a fag hag.

— Okage, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Wassila.

— Makiko, Makiko Nagano. Okage is the rice that sticks to the bottom of the pot.

— Her great-grandfather was Japan’s first ambassador to the United States under Commodore Perry. They called him Shorty.

— Not Shorty, Tommy. They named a polka after him, “Tommy’s Polka,” even though his name wasn’t Tommy. He used to hop off trains and run and jump back on them. I’m the reincarnation of my great-grandfather. That’s why I feel I belong in this country. If my father had been born in America, he would have been a maricón. He is very vain like Brascho. A whole collection of designer suits and shoes and ties. I illustrate children’s books. I don’t like children, but I love animals. This is Moi, a Schipperke, and this is Brascho, a Jersey Woolly. I lost my Chinese turtle, Ming, but I still have dozens of fish and an iguana which lives in a fish tank that Tess and I stole from Brascho’s apartment. I loved him. He was beautiful. Ugly people give me rashes. Hillary Clinton looks like Yoko Ono. Doesn’t she? We Japanese love to imitate, but when we imitate, like we sing salsa, the woman who is singing this song is Japanese, with a perfect Spanish accent even though she doesn’t know what she is saying. We Japanese are wackos. We always say yes, yes, yes, and you have to guess if it’s a yes or a no, and then you just have to confront our smile and laugh with us, with your hand over your mouth. Japanese are not supposed to show their teeth when they smile.

— Nor whistle at night, it’s bad luck. But they don’t believe that to dream of weddings means death.

— I can’t laugh and show my teeth. That’s low class. But to dream of teeth or white snakes is good luck, especially on New Year’s Day. And I know five bad words in Spanish: coño, pendejo, puta, maricón, carajo.

— Perfect pronunciation.

— Corzas, a Mexican painter, taught me. And Tess perfected my pronunciation. I’m an expert at breaking up relationships. But I’m a very generous person and I love to cook. What do you do?

— I worked with Martin Scorsese. But now I’m on my own. Scouting raw material.

— Where are you from?

— Canada. But my mother is from Chile. I am Jewish.

— Like Mona. You look like her.

— Very interesting. We are both Northern Europeans. I don’t know if it was because I grew up in boarding schools 3,000 miles away from my parents. My father was a diplomat, neither rich nor poor, but I grew up in boarding schools. I don’t know if it was because of that that I lost confidence in myself.

— Mona went to a boarding school in Belgium when she was four years old; it was a boys’ school, and the Beechnut girl and Mona were the only girls. Mona suffered because her mother never sent her Christmas gifts, so the school had to give her a plain ol’ dictionary wrapped up so she wouldn’t be the only one without a gift, but everybody knew it was just a plain ol’ dictionary. One year, her brother Benny got a sled. Mona got all excited thinking she’d get a sled. No such luck, just another plain ol’ dictionary. And she had to see all the boys receiving the holy communion, and she used to wonder:

— Why can’t I have it too?

— I used to read every book that fell in my hands. I’m an excellent letter writer. Maybe because I grew up in a boarding school 3,000 miles away from any blood relative. May I see your palm Amazing. A double lifeline. I see no sickness, but you actually live two lives. The 2nd longer and more prosperous than the first. Maybe a new career.

— I’m psychic.

— Can we talk? After Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese went belly-up. His agent sat him down, put both hands on his shoulders, and said:

— Look, Marty, my man, ya gotta bite da bullet. Ya gonna hafta do other people’s films ’til ya can afford to do ya own.

Which is what Marty did, or rather I did for him for three years, like The Grifters, which was milk and water except for the grace of Anjelica Huston. Well, as planned, he made enough money from Cape Fear so as not to have to produce other people’s films anymore, and that’s why I’m out of a job. I was too successful. Now, I’m thinking, I’m 42 years old and I have to go back to Vancouver and depend on my parents whom I don’t really know because I grew up in a boarding school 3,000 miles away.

— Stay in New York. This is your place.

— You think so? I was very happy in London, where I lived for 10 years as a literary agent. I have an apartment there which I am subletting. Plus I am not a citizen. Marty is writing letters for me so I can get a green card. I cannot ask him for more favors.

— I see you here.

— You think so? There is no business here. Ask Suzana, the movie industry is in California. That’s where I met Marty. I said, I’ll tell you a sad story and a happy story. If you think the sad story is sad, and the happy story is happy, then we can work together. And we did, swimmingly, for three years. Maybe all this is happening so I can get to know my parents before they die.

— You’ll make it. You need to fill your tanks in Canada and come back here and start scouting raw material.

— You think so? I’m tired of working for other people. I want to work for myself.

— They sound like frogs and chickens, ducks and hens.

— New York is a canister of echoes, a canister of sounds and sunsets — resounding — resounding — resounding.

— Crude is the word, raw.

— Like a carrot. A raw carrot.

— It’s the last great European city. And the first great American city.

— And the capital of Puerto Rico.

— On the verge of collapsing.

— This city has always been apocalyptic. Since the turn of the century, when the subways were laid, the streets were gutted, tunnels gorged, people leaping, anarchic steps from one muddy plank to another. Memory has few landmarks. Wear it down. Tear it down. Beethoven rolls around Central Park on rollerblades and motorcycles, and he’s a contemporary of Jackson and Madonna vis-à-vis Walkmans. Every pair of ears picks its own noise. The dead are alive, alive and rolling around like dice on Wall Street.

— Nobody is secure. Suing the president for sexual harassment. There is no authority that cannot go unchallenged. We could never have a queen. We would dethrone her. No respect. Not even for the dead.

— I was in a hurry. I took a cab. I was planning to walk, but I always leave everything for the last moment. Where are the keys? Always under my nose. But the moment I have to leave, I look at my watch, already five minutes late, oh, here they are. I rush out, but the elevator takes an eternity and stops on every floor. Traffic. Rush hour. The driver taking me the long way, the meter rolling. Why did he take the long way? We would be there already. What can I do? Sit back and relax. Out of the corner of my eye, I see out the window a drunkard has finished his bottle of rum, and he takes the bottle back over his shoulder, in slow motion — what is he going to do, throw it — where? I hear the crash of the bottle against the windshield. Freeze-frame. What happened? Am I dead? That sound. A bomb in my face. The window shattered, diamonds showering the driver and me — frozen, silent. Am I dead or alive and quaking? I asked the driver:

— Should we go to the police and report him?

— As if they cared. I’ll take you to your destination. They mustn’t track your references, they mustn’t know who you are, they mustn’t trace your roots and pinpoint you — there she is, now nail her to the cross of an address, name, portfolio, credit card, social security number, telephone number, mother’s name, father’s name — they’ll cross-examine you, they’ll dig into you until they dig your grave, and then they’ll bury you, shedding powder on your dirty face, and shedding tears on their evidence, wild cards, wild ducks, they’ll forget you were alive, and they’ll shed tears, tearing apart your grave. Grave is the world, torn apart under this dirty earth.

One day, Aeschylus, bald and old, was walking along a beach in Sicily, watching the sea, when a seagull flew overhead with a turtle it was going to eat, opened its beak and dropped the turtle on Aeschylus’s bald head, mistaking it for a rock.

— And cracked the turtle open.

— Like a nutshell. And killed the tragedy with a comedy.

— What a riot, the braying of destiny. The bleating of a goat. Alpha and omega. The laughter of a bubble when it lands on salty sand and wets it.

— One day, I was walking, hearing jackhammers pounding the streets, and thinking — danger — if those aqueducts come loose, the earth will swallow me whole. And just as I skirted my way to safety, holy shit, a bicycle. Near miss. Asshole. They should outlaw bikers. They’re a menace to society. They ride the sidewalks, run red lights, and mow you down with fear. Just because they’re messengering life. Racing at top speed. Lightning flashes in the air. Pronto. Pronto. And in one of those urgent urgencies, I open a taxi door and another biker slams right into it, messenger of death.

— Are you all right?

— Yes. No problem.

He got up groaning and wheeled his crooked bike out of traffic. Serves him right. Messengers, in-betweenies, go-betweenies. Why do they get in the way? Happy to be alive — and hearing all the ruckus. Radios. Horns. Jackhammers. Sirens. Between the growling in my stomach and my dreams — pa-pa, boom-boom, conversations — in tune with my being, I am whole with the body I forge when I walk, and I am exhausted, better exhausted, the head spins faster when the body is exhausted. I would like to walk inexhaustible, walk tireless, walk nonstop, getting in shape. The wind whips around the corner like a knotted whip, hinders my entrance, exit, the return comes later, much later, we’ll get to it later when we have more time, we’ll have fewer hours later so how will we have more time, because we’ll have fewer hours, we’ll have more time, only if we know how to make the most of it, by not wasting it, by wasting it, we’ll make the most of it. Then, out of the blue, a brick falls right in front of me. I don’t even have time to react. I just looked up and down. And shook my head. A breath of luck. Knock on wood.

— Rub a bald head for good luck. Caress it. So no one else on this wretched earth will ever have to suffer Aeschylus’s fate.

— Makiko came to me. I told her:

— You look beautiful.

— I feel fat.

— Why?

— I am sad. I don’t know why.

Then Rey passed by and glared at her, disgusted, and she glared back at him.

— Was it because of Leen?

— I think Makiko is living with Leen because she wants to be like her — beautiful. But then, as close as she gets, she realizes she is not. Beauty makes her miserable.

— I think she was sad because Rey came to the party, and she realized he still controls Leen. That made her sad — she feels used by both of them as if they are playing games with her. She doesn’t know where she stands with Rey and Leen. Somewhere in between.

— I feel for Rey. Suppose we had a fight and you tell Mona, because you need to confide in somebody, and Mona tells you:

— Leave him and come live with me.

Rey feels betrayed by Makiko. I would have felt the same with Mona.

— It’s not as if this were the first time. She broke her sister and Cano apart. Now, she lives with Leen and her sister.

— Misery loves company.

— Just be for real, baby. I don’t wanna be hurt by love again. Are you just for the thrill? I’m flexible. But just be real. I don’t wanna be hurt, hurt by love again.

— Be careful, Suzana. I see it in her face. She is already writing her next fragment. Word for word. And Tess, the tape recorder, will catch everything she misses. I already know. One takes the photo of feelings. The other one quotes the nuances. You can’t win.

— I don’t care. Take it. Take it all.

— She’s stealing my muse. Don’t pay attention.

— I already know she likes what you’re saying. She’s already writing it.

— I don’t care. Take it. Take it all.

— And what about painters? Goya and Velázquez. You think all their models liked how they are portrayed? And no one stops you from taking photos.

— You don’t even change names. Nothing is sacred. Not even friendship. You’re like Truman Capote.

— I’m not frivolous. I’m doing a portrait of reality. If I am observing the funeral of a famous man, I must talk from the point of view of the widow, with no distance from sorrow, the journalist, with distance enough to appeal to the masses with melodrama or soap opera, and the artist with the most distance so I can objectify it, but I should also become the dead man. Only if I am all of them — dead man, widow, journalist and artist — can I become Velázquez and paint Las Meninas.

— Angles of realities.

— Exactly, points of view, that’s what makes the personal general. A myriad of experiences — however minute, petite, personal — who cares.

— I believe in seizing the moment.

— Look at her eyes. She’s a Cheshire cat.

— Take it now, baby, but be for real. A thrill. Just let me know. But he didn’t. He was afraid. Men are afraid. They don’t follow through.

— Why is it?

— I guess the way they were raised. They don’t dare to take risks. And I was ready. To support him. Maybe because he was a man, he could not accept it. Will I find happiness?

— You are happy.

— I wanted him — and he was for me — we felt it. Both of us. If it happens when you’re 20 you say — maybe he feels it. But you’re not sure. But at 40, when one feels the connection, it’s for real. And for two weeks.

— He’s married?

— Divorced. But he didn’t dare to take another risk.

— The same with Madere.

— Why is it? There’s only today, today. We make each moment, we fill it with passion. And I know he was feeling what I was feeling. I want to be loved. Oh, be for real. If you’re looking for a thrill. Just let me know. I don’t want love to hurt, hurt me again. No, nevermore, anymore.

— Let’s dance. I loved that story of your childhood when you were sent to America from Croatia.

— I’m not going to help you.

— Did I ask for your help? You, you are stealing my muse. If she knows I’m watching her, she won’t act natural.

— Be for real, baby.

— That is what I say, Suzy. They are not for real. They are staring at me, and they don’t want me to capture your muse. I’m not stealing your muse, Suzy. I just want to seize your waves, your feelings, seizing, Suzy, your soul.

— There she goes again. Don’t let her torture you.

— I want to hear the story of when you came to America by yourself and the captain of the cargo ship woke up the passengers in the middle of the night and said:

— Now throw your bottles!

— It was pitch black except for the distant lights of Messina, and it was dead quiet except for the splash of the bottles. It must be in a movie someday. If I could find the right person to write the script. It is more than an image. It is a metaphor.

— For what?

— For something.

— Tess can write the script. But I’m sorry, it has to be in my book first because I already have Wassila, Mona, and Makiko’s childhood episodes — and I need Suzy’s.

— Suzy, Suzy, the dog in Short Cuts. I edited the soundtrack. Suzy and the policeman and the children.

— Suzy, I think and I talk of my mother, the way they talked of Suzy. My mother is coming. Stop. My mother has to cross the street. My mother is here. Isn’t she beautiful? She’s my mother. She’s Suzy.

— Be for real.

— And the bakery. Why did they turn to the baker for comfort when their boy died? And he offers them a muffin. And when they say they want to see his birthday cake, he had already thrown it out. Maybe he threw it out the moment he died. We’ll never know.

— It is depressing.

— No, it’s real. If you’re looking for a rainbow, you know there’s gonna be some rain. Be for real. The captain said:

— Now, throw your bottles!

It was the last time we would see land. We were in deep waters. Inside the bottle sealed with a cork, a letter to my mother and cigarettes for the fisherman so they could put a stamp on it.

— It got there?

— My mother received the letter and keeps it to this day with my Easter bonnet.

— The truth is that we are never properly dressed.

— Especially if you are dressed in New Jersey and you are returning to Croatia. There was mother and father, waiting after a year, Easter, for the ship to disembark, and my aunt in Hoboken dressed me like a blue bunny with a basket full of marshmallow eggs to give to my brother and sister. My mother, when she saw me, took me right to the ladies’ room and stripped me of my bunny dress. I thought I was fashionable with lilies on my bonnet and cherries on my shoes. All costumes are ridiculous. They all show how stupid we are believing in ludicrous mannerisms, which fade away, but be for real, baby, ’cause I don’t wanna be hurt. I was the lead singer in a rock band when I was 13, the Little Stone Faces, for real, then I started bingeing and got fat because I was small, and in my country in the age of Twiggy if you’re small, you dress dainty, and I was unhappy with their idea of me, as if I always had to wear frilly skirts because I was small, but here they say I’m Giuletta Massina. I started liberating myself when I came here, and I started dressing for my size, and wearing jeans, and unafraid to be myself, I liberated myself.

— Waiting for the miracle to come. Suzy, you’re carpe diem. I’m ubi-sunt. I never thought I would write an elegy about the past — my memories — lamentations — after I wrote the Inquisition of Memories. Never say I’ll never say never. You’ll say it. Again and again. Never again. The revenge of realities against dreams. And my mother tells me:

— Use some imagination. Don’t exploit your brother’s death and call me a piggy bank.

I can’t complain anymore. Stop, now let your wounds be healed with a kiss. Let me kiss it and make it feel better. Don’t touch it, let it dry, but you scratch it open, you want to see your wounds bleeding.

— Oh baby, be for real. Just let it flow.

— Oh, Suzy, let me wrap you in your capes, your scarves. Let’s see, maybe I can mix lemon and lime, oil and vinegar. Carpe diem, come here.

— Take me. I’m here.

— Oh, Suzy, I’m drunk. I don’t know what I’m feeling. And I don’t know where my carpe diem is. Did it fly away with Poetic License? Surprise. I have a Halloween in Christmas and Halloween in Easter. And ubi-sunt regrets: where is it? I’m here. Don’t listen. I’m drunk. But more drunk are my feelings that are filling me with drunken thoughts, and I mourn the elegy of my ubi-sunt while I dance with your carpe diem, collige virgo rosae.

— Everything is a sign. My voice teacher in London died of cancer before she turned forty. Her death began my destiny. My husband composed an opera for her, and I sang its premiere in Carnegie Hall. I was not very happy in London because I had no one to develop my voice. So I decided to cut my hair and start a new life here.

— I decided to let mine grow because Samson lost his strength when they cut his hair. It’s dangerous to have your hair cut every time you have a new idea.

— But what about my husband? He’s bald.

— Does he have a beard?

— A red one.

— Then he’s protected. Something must always grow in you. When my hair was very short I didn’t shave my legs or armpits. What was growing was a secret.

— Everything is a sign. People appear in your life as guardian angels who guide you through different realms of reality.

— You believe in destiny?

— I certainly do.

— You think we all have a purpose?

— I certainly do.

— Why, then, may I ask you, do most people live their lives without even knowing what they have to do? I don’t know why I am here, but since I am here, I want to do something.

— It’s all symbolic, yes, it’s predetermined and, yes, it’s sealed with a fatal kiss. For your blessing and well-being. That is what I believe.

— A friend of mine, a mezzo, who I want you to meet, has a beautiful voice, and she told me, there are so many people nowadays with beautiful voices. She said, it’s not enough, she said, you need to be an actress and look the part.

— It’s a matter of contacts.

— Everything helps, I say, but it all boils down to talent. Not talent alone, discipline and determination.

— I don’t believe in talent. It’s a bourgeoisie concept. It doesn’t exist. Abilities exist, capabilities. How many poor people have abilities they don’t even realize they have? Talent is the social conceit of a class like yours. Created by leisure. Not by necessity.

— You’ve got a real talent for denial. My father had the talent to write but not the capability to develop it. Talent is a grace. Capability is the history of circumstances.

— Here, Suzana, they are for you.

— Parrots, how lovely. Let me put them on.

— Aren’t they ravishing?

— Really, Mishy. You’re an artist.

— Don’t ever say that.

— Why not? You have talent. What you lack is confidence in yourself.

— It’s a matter of urge. The artist has an urgency. If you don’t act on it, you die. If you don’t create, nothing will create you.

— I don’t know. I don’t believe in life or death romantics. When I was studying at Cooper Union 25 years ago…

— Impossible!

— It’s true, I’m an old dog.

— Impossible!

— 25 years ago, I can’t believe it myself, I took a course with Andy Warhol, and he said that he makes art because he doesn’t know what else to do. I gotta admit, I identified.

— Maybe, it’s true, I didn’t know what else to do, no, it’s not true, I do what I do because I had something to say.

— I make jewelry when my husband is cutting bricks and when the kids are napping, but I don’t long to create something that makes an impact, that lasts.

— You never know, look at Paloma.

— The difference is the intensity, and the materials aren’t everlasting.

— Gold is everlasting, diamonds, pearls.

— I’m talking about everlasting passions.

— I thought we were talking about producing art. Some people say my paintings are emotional. Others say they are cerebral. I would say they are intellectual. I could have been an architect. Space is what images are about, ordering borders, creating space so that you can breathe. Where is the wind blowing? Where does the light come from — thinking — planning before you act.

— Sometimes thinking kills the spontaneity. You yourself have often told me that you have an idea for a painting but you can’t tell me what it is about because if you tell me, you will feel as though you already did the painting. Ideas die without the execution. Mishy is talking about the drive to execute.

— Drive doesn’t only make artists. Napoleon — and all those politicians out there have urges to execute their commands.

— I have an urge to smoke. Who is to say whose urges are more important? Everybody has urges.

— What is the difference between an urge and a craving?

— You look for differences where there are no differences. But I will grant you — grant you a difference. An urge is an urge I must act on. If I crave something, it doesn’t mean I feel the urgency. Although usually they’re a couple. I have the urge when I have the craving. Cravings and urges belong to hungry minds. Or hungry bodies, and they can create habits, or vices. And they can liberate human beings, give them joy, and produce music. If urges and cravings are not satisfied at the exact moment, they can become longings, and longings can last an eternity or disappear rapidly, depending on the persistence and perseverance of the passion they can disappear, retract, and resurge, or repeat, and you can recognize the reappearance of the same longing that craves and the urge that like an inspiring comet is: now or never. And if you don’t get it now, forget about it, it’s now or never, now or never, impatience, because the urgency exists in the urge of the instant that dies — you know with certainty that that urge has a deadline, a limit, and if you don’t take advantage of the instant when you know it must be — like inspiration — it carries a vision and a passion and a moment — now or never — and it’s never again — again — in the same way — and you know it can repeat but never again the same — and these elements, contrary to popular opinion, carry the urges farther up in their immediacy, the attack must be done right away, no time to lose in talking about it, it is now or never, now or never.

— We are living in an era where genius does not exist. If we talk about talent, we think of the talented Michael Jackson, or Elvis Presley, or the Beatles. Ask a man in the streets who he thinks is talented. Michael Jackson, he’ll say, he’s talented.

— Nobody would say Michael Jackson. They’d say Pavarotti or Domingo.

— What talent does Michael Jackson have?

— Nobody mentioned Michael Jackson.

— What a voice he’s got!

— He’s got no voice.

— He’s got a voice.

— What voice he has got?

— None, but he’s great.

— What is grrrreat? I hear that word so much.

— Want a hamburger?

— Yeah, great.

— Let’s go to a film.

— Great idea.

— He’s charismatic. Mesmerizing. Hypnotic.

— He’s great.

— I like him. I do. I really do.

— He’s a powerhouse like Madonna.

— But he’s no Nijinsky. Not even Nureyev. Who is he? That’s the talent we recognize today. Forty years ago Picasso and Neruda were the Greta Garbos of painting and poetry.

— They had star quality like Warhol.

— He was not an artist. He was a businessman like Madonna. Madonna is a thermometer. That’s what she does — measure the fever of society. A thermometer is not a work of art, but a very useful instrument.

— Your opinions have no bearing, no substance at all. Andy Warhol was one of the most influential, multitalented artists of our day.

— Artaud was a man of multiple talents.

— Too many.

— I adore Artaud, but he does not have a work like Rimbaud. Of course, I could say that Baudelaire was much more intelligent than Rimbaud, but I prefer Rimbaud’s poetry.

— You cannot measure IQ through poetry.

— What about essays and translations? He did Edgar Allen Poe, you know. Even Verlaine is more intelligent than Rimbaud. But I still prefer Rimbaud. Funny, we don’t think of Shakespeare as an intelligent man — we know him as genius. He never wrote on Chaucer or translated Boccaccio. We know Cervantes was a brilliant man. I have my doubts about Goya. Although all of them were men of passion.

— There is no competition. Genius is genius. Period. I have spoken. They can all exist together with plenty of room for the Jacksons and the Madonnas and the McDonalds and the Burger Kings and the Pizza Huts.

— Which is better: Chinese, Italian, or French food?

— Why do you always have to compare?

— Which is more universal? Spaghetti, pizza, fried rice, chow mien, even tacos and tortillas more than quiche. There’s not a universal French dish with mass appeal.

— I agree, the Chinese and the Italians reach the most people around the world. Like Jackson, but that doesn’t make him better than everyone else. Talent is so universal, it is common. After all, we are all dogs — Russian dogs, Cuban dogs, or American dogs. We all bark. That’s what we have in common. And we should admit that all we can do is bark. I bark now, you later, why do you bark, how do you bark, what made you bark — cat, murder, rape, bone. How do we distinguish one barking from another barking if we are all barking, and we all like to bark, and none of us realizes that all we can do is bark — and none of us hears which is more potent or more piercing than the others. We all think we are special in our barking.

— The era of the generalist is coming back. The specialist is dated. The nose specialist, does he consider your eyes, your mouth, your aura, your personality, before he breaks your nose and turns you into another Chihuahua? No, he goes cross-eyed staring at your nose. Jack-of-all-trades, the specialist diminishes the value of knowing it all, or at least, trying to grasp it all, and adds: master of none. A specialist, just for discerning the details, is not a wise man. A wise man can be a fool. Look what Alcibiades used to say of Socrates — drunk, in the taverns, with rotten teeth. Mistaken for a beggar. How can a wise man look so base? Looks are deceiving.

— They’re not deceiving, my darling, they’re confusing. If I say — here, pretzels, here, porn films, here, sexy bodies — then they will flock to me looking for cheap thrills, thinking I am another Madonna, but in the middle of my show, I’ll play a trick on them, as they have been playing tricks on me. Saying it’s great, when it tastes like shit. I’ll do the opposite. I’ll dress like a slutty punk, but I’ll give them the real thing, and I don’t mean Coke. I’ll give them poetry.

— What kind of poetry do you write?

— What do you mean?

— I write sonnets, and you?

— I can’t fit life into rhyme scheme. It would be a strait-jacket. Rhythm is free. How can I accept rhythms of ancient ages when I’m feeling my own rhythm? The velocity of cars — the engines of our time — concords, faxes, guns, and subways. The way we talk and the way we commute. Do we have time to write novels? What is immortal in a novel is not the form, which is long dead, but the context. And the same with poetry — what is said — that remains, but the way we say things, changes.

— Which means, you write blank verse like Neruda.

— No verse.

— Like Rimbaud or Baudelaire — little prose poems?

— I do not write little poems. I write big books. Which is not to imply that I like everything in them.

— Then why do you publish them?

— Because it’s not a matter of liking. Because to tell you the truth, many times, I don’t like myself. What am I going to do? Kill myself because I don’t like myself? No, I exist. Those poems I do not like function in the whole work. And they work well. So, it’s not a matter of liking. I don’t like my nose, but it exists and it works well.

— You could also get a nose job.

— Why, I can breathe.

— Do you write every day?

— I don’t have something to say every day.

— I always find something to say. I have the feeling we are very different poets.

— I’m sure Suzana told you that I won a poetry contest at the Poetry Society of America. It had an environmental theme. What do you write about?

— I don’t have themes. I have flavors like Bazooka. My favorite is the pink one. I love to suck all the sugar out of the pink one.

— Flavors don’t last, especially Bazooka. Poetry has a mission, and I take my role very seriously.

— So do I. I want poetry to be a fashion show — to have a taste of frivolity — savoir faire — a taste of time at its peak — Kenzo, Gigli, and Gaultier. I’m more excited by Bergdorf’s windows than the contemporary poetry I’ve read.

— Who have you read?

— I don’t read any of them.

— It shows. You must realize you’re limiting your audience by writing in both languages. To know a language is to know a culture. You neither respect one nor the other.

— If I respected languages like you do, I wouldn’t write at all. The Berlin Wall came down. Why can’t I do the same? Since the Tower of Babel, languages have always divorced us from the rest of humanity. Poetry must find ways of breaking distance. I’m not reducing my audience. On the contrary, I’m going to have a bigger audience with the common markets — in Europe — in America. And besides, all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds. I feel like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and I even feel like Garcilaso forging a new language. I welcome the new century, the century of the new American language, and wave farewell to all the separatist rhetoric and atavisms.

Welcome the sun, spider,

Don’t be so spiteful.

A kiss,

Giannina Braschi.

— How do you sleep at night?

— I snuggle with the dead when I go to bed.

— You feel colonized.

— Totally colonized.

— You don’t feel cosmopolitan.

— Totally cosmopolitan.

— That’s a contradiction in terms.

— My confusion is my statement of clarity. I live with plenty of identities within myself. And I want all of them to work. Poetry has been the useless art for too long. It’s been absent from life, history making, and the Daily News. It doesn’t matter how political it strives to be. To make a political statement is not to be politically alive. Poetry should jump out of the system like Tinguely’s machines out of good and bad, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong. Poetry is fun. Poetry hasn’t been fun for ages. It should give pleasure. We’ve grown accustomed to unhappy poetry. My poetry is happy not to be sad. I steal pleasure from toys, movies, television, videos, machines, games — and put the fun back in function so the work runs like an engine that clinks and clanks, tingles and tangles, whirs and buzzes, grinds and creaks, whistles and pops itself into a catabolic dämmerung of junk and scrap.

— Which one is the poet?

— They both are.

— Who’s reading tonight?

— The Rican.

— Poetry is a dead art, long dead. I want the here and now, Coke and pretzels, junk food, fast food. I have to ask myself what I am doing here, listening to a Rican who can’t speak English or Spanish.

— I can understand Spanish, but I can’t understand Puerto Ricans.

— We have a similar problem. I can understand English, but I cannot understand Americans.

— Scum of the earth. Banish them from the Republic. Sponges. Chameleons.

— So what. Zelig is a chameleon.

— Zelig is Woody Allen, and Woody Allen is a filmmaker, and filmmakers count and poets don’t.

— When do we eat?

— I’m nervous. Did you see him? Over there.

— Who?

— Scorsese. What is he doing here?

— Wassila invited him.

— I should have known. I would have worn my Armani suit. Why did you made me wear this Mao Tse-tung outfit? It doesn’t fit me. I don’t belong here. I’m scared. Why did you take me out of my closet? I’m going to be so famous I don’t even want to think about it. But I’m not ready to expose myself. How dreadful to be somebody. To know that I was nobody. To feel so hurt inside — knowing that I was somebody — inside. To know I was so shy — nobody knew I was somebody — except some nobodies. To know that I was neglected, unwanted, and to be here in front of Scorsese, who’ll recognize my talent and make me a movie star.

— We’ll worry about it after it happens. In the meantime, try to shine.

— I’m not Madonna. I want my closet back. Close my doors. Do you think they really want to know who I am?

— Of course not. Some are here for a taste of Suzana’s salmon mousse and high art. Others want her movie contacts and coconut rice.

— Oh, my God. Let’s go home. Robert De Niro. What am I doing here? With all these mafiosos. Al Pacino. I’m gonna die. The Godfather himself.

— Whatever you do, don’t sound lyrical. Grumble guttural, sardonic threats. I’m gonna crack ya mudda fuckin’ head open. Smash ya goddamn teef in. Mafia talk.

— Deny my culture.

— Mock it. Roll your r’s rougher like you’re mad.

— I am mad. What am I doing here?

— Shhh. Remember, bring out the killer inside you.

— Macbeth has murdered sleep. I can’t remember my lines. My hands are bloody sleepy, bloody merry, Bloody Mary, with scotch on the rocks, and my heart just stands still for Al Pacino.

— I told you we had to practice.

— I don’t have to practice. I know it by heart.

— Don’t improvise like you did the last time, incorporating cheap shots into the text.

— You made me so angry I had to read what I was feeling inside, which was stormier than the way I wrote it. I wanted to see if you really felt the part. Don’t look offended by your lines. I didn’t invent these dialogues. They’re your words, Mr. Nice Guy. But you cringe with beet red shame whenever I quote you. I know it’s painful to be ashamed. We all feel ashamed sometimes. You thought we had it all rehearsed, but if I let you, you would steal the show.

— Steal the show! Everyone can tell you wrote it. You keep all the best lines for yourself.

— Everything is improvised one way or another. But all I see is one huge highway where cars don’t stop for anybody, and I’m waiting for a miracle or a solution to my dilemma — I have to cross the street, but there are no traffic lights — please, somebody, be kind enough to stop and let me cross, or everybody, please stop for a second to let me cross, or take me down the highway of destiny, where there is a lighthouse in the night, smoky air, and flickering candles — like a child lost in the night of a party, who sits in a crowd, wondering: Where am I? I look around. I am a child lost in the crowd of that party, showing his heart of music and pain. That’s me — drunk, wild and blue, always looking around the smoky air and flickering candles — like the child who, in the night of the party, feels lost in the cloud, the smoky air, and the flickering candles — showing his heart of music and pain.

I want to think the way men think when they’re tired of thinking. With dead eyes. I am dead. And it’s not a matter of surviving. I have survived. And I’m not proud that I’m one of the survivors. Survivors are not proud of having left the dead behind — they’re just as dead as the dead — and their smell stinks more than the stench of the dead. Just because you rise at dawn, and you walk, and talk — alive or dead — you’re more dead than alive. Stop talking about you — as if it were somebody else but you — me — myself — the dead — looking at the blank verse in a mirror every morning and brushing my teeth with the infamous cavity — right through the blank verse because it’s blank without verse or phrase or paraphrase — sound or mute — blank or empty — the eyes of the verse fill the blank verse and open each window of my verse, my veracity, my versatility.

Explain yourself in a better mood. Just because you’re young flesh and I’m frontal to my death. Why must I continue surviving and breathing for the rest of my life? When will I die without my breath stinking of immortality? Oh, come on, nobody is immortal nowadays. We continue living without possessing our lives — in mutiny — in futility — unmotivated by the immobility of immutability — invalidated by a certificate of mortality, immobility, immortability, tranquility, morbality, morbidity, mortability — we’re morbidly mortal before the tomb, rest in peace before time has passed for us to repose in lazy peace for the rest of our dying days before our clothes stink of the mortuary — and bring life to its feet, topless — we cry and sing.

Here, in silence, surrounded by stages to mount upon mount upon mount and climbing each step of a stair with cautious eyes to look around, upon a stair, I sigh, and look down there, where the subway runs and returns, and there is a noise that noises my nose, I take out my handkerchief, and of course, of course, of course, in the blank verse I blow my nose, hard and loud. I blow it out of proportions, out of dimensions and proportions — tiny and gigantic, certainty and certainly, danger and proximity, altitude and dexterity, enterprise of multiple choices — a wrong answer against a right attitude — fortitude of mind behind a window of desire, and perplexity and doubt, upsetting the nervous system of la cage aux fois.

Do it right. Or at least get even. Even if I stress my mind, I stretch my neck and bones crack my other fortitudes, and no one is certainly more certain than doubt and proximity. Even when dancing gets even with drinking and dining — and sleeping pills don’t sleep at all — but sour stress and bags under the eyes, frontal to mirrors and glances — taking buses and subways to come and go and get upset at the boss, not at me, honey, I am just counting the pennies to get back home and prepare your tasty supper.

Develop your argument, see you tomorrow, don’t miss the appointment, the opportunity of a decade, sounds good, honey, but I prefer to do it the right way, shortcut is longcut, if you cut it too short it’s never too long to grow back again, but remember you’ll have to wait, and patience is way off in your calendar. Dividends against multiplications. Cariolets against friendly people — or are you following the book of rules step by step and connoisseurs of wines and dines — and dividends and months and connoisseurs of time — and high-piled papers to fill out — no address, no phone number, no multiple choices, no way out against orders, responsibilities piling up, filling blank checks and multiplying dozens by thousands before falling asleep in the coma of retirement, golden age of sorrow and no return to the truths and blues of morrow, I pay homage to the dead, and return to my pile of work, paperwork, waste of time for the rest of my junkie life.

I open my eyes and I see, but I have seen so many times that I don’t see the way I saw love, blue of eyes, blinded, blindfolded, the first of times. I see love interested in how old are you, can you take care of me when I am old, I’m growing weary, will you feed me — so love is not blind madness — to be blind as love is blind is to be mad as love is mad and mad is blind — and love is mad if it follows the pattern of your life. I can assure you he is blindfolded, Cupid is mad, mad of love for you, he wants you to love calculating each step you take, and then you lose your chance, and you only live twice.

Can you finish your thoughts in a roundabout way? How can I play a fair game? Clear of gasses after red meat. Clear of thoughts that come to pass so full of paradigms and stratagems. So bloated and inflated with presuppositions and impositions from the dignitaries of discipline. Mandatories of embassies — always sending us messages — for avoiding troubles — when they come with the troubles they send to avoid newest buildings of monumental troubles and sorrows. I blew the horn to survive, and I blew the whistle to make it shine, and merried myself while shining the silver — and then I stopped believing in silver — and changed my money to wine. I jumped the horses of moneys I got and troubled my monkeys with horses of blue. Velvet blue and malgre tout, I love you, my cherie. Où sont nos amoureuses? Elles sont au tombeau! Oh, please, get me free of meee. Free of taxes and free of impossibilities and free of presuppositions and free of impositions and free of preposteritions and free of prepositions and suspicions and ammunitions and recognitions. I feel free from freedom, free from the statue of freedom, enslave me in a statue of freedom, my kingdom is a cry to freedom, you didn’t get it right, freedom, I want to enslave my freedom, with freedom, free alone is better with freedom than alone with freedom, and without freedom alone there is no freedom alone. I am not alone free.

Where are the stinky feet I am missing here? If I smell a stinky soaking sock and I suck and suck the smell that sucks these stinky sucking wet sucks that stink the socks of the smell I suck. I tell you, it’s rotten stinky. It sucks my blood, and it stinks of rot, it rots my stink, and it stinks my feet with stinky soaking wet socks, it’s dry and soaking wet, but if you soak it while you dry it, it sucks while its stinky smelly feet soaking wet become dry and hot at the same time, and it’s stinky, soaking wet. Sucks. Sucks and sucks.

Have you thought about me lately? Thought about you. Or suck about you. Suck the smelling stinky thoughts are soaking wet while drying — fumes — the smelling stinky thoughts, away, the dry and stinky smells of earth, of paradigms and concubines and clementines — and tangerines and rice ’n beans — breezes — smiling teases — stinkies are mine — yours are fine — breezes fallen from the tomb to nothing — stinkies are mine.

How did I perform?

— Didn’t you hear them laughing? I had to keep pausing. They were always laughing. And the ones who laughed hardest were the students. I enjoy performing for the masses.

— Students are not the masses.

— They know what’s in and what’s out. Youths are closer to life because they’re not frustrated by their jobs and their children. They still have hopes of becoming something. Art is hope.

— Art is history. If you don’t remember, you don’t have a past.

— Who wants the past? I want the future.

— And when you grow old, what will you have?

— More past than future. But now I have more future than past.

— Future is an illusion. A bubble.

— Bubbles are nice.

— Youth understands nothing worth understanding. It took me years to understand James Joyce. I understood his youth only when I became younger and lighter with age. The older generation should understand me better if they became younger like me. Were their parents serious?

— They were laughing too.

— I should have picked a profound piece.

— Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

— It was too complicated. The language barrier. Plus I was dressed in gray silk. I should have worn wool solids. And I should have slept before the performance. To be fresh. To get inside the character. The audience distracted me. Who invited Cenci to the reading? Did you see what he was doing?

— Next time I’ll tell him to leave the room.

— Shuffling his feet to distract me.

— He’s got no class. Next time I’ll give him a taste of his own medicine.

— And Olmo-Olmo, did you see what he did?

— I was minding my own character.

— Arms crossed, he flared his nostrils when they clapped. I have never done that to anyone. Envy, pure envy.

— It’s not envy. It’s annoyance. They don’t appreciate your poetry.

— Come here.

— Me?

— I want to congratulate you on your reading. You have a mellifluous voice, curiously deep and melodic. By no means am I suggesting that you could make it as a singer or an actress, but you do read well.

— I think of myself as an actor and a singer. If I had the chance, if someone discovered me.

— Dialogues come easy to you. You should write plays.

— Screenplays, a psychic told me my next work would be made into a film.

— Transformed maybe, but I don’t see you as a screen-writer. Go for the Obies not the Oscars. I suggest you frame the dialogues with stage directions to usher the voices. Who is speaking? I am speaking. Then name the speaker.

— Why? How does a conversation go? Do I say: Suzana: and then Suzana speaks. Is this a classroom?

— For clarity’s sake so that it will hold up on the page.

— This is a musical composition.

— You don’t need an editor. You need a director. I’m going to introduce you to a friend of mine. Sam, Sam Shepard.

— Paris, Texas. I love him and Wim Wenders too.

— And me. Do you love me?

— You’re one of my favorites — of course I love you. Why is everything nice and great and shining blue in the sky? Why did I have to tell him I love Sam Shepherd and Wim Wenders, and why did he ask me if I loved him? And why did I answer — of course, you’re one of my favorites. I want to puke this whole party. I want to vomit 57th Street and all its commerce. I want to retch 1,000 coins, worth nothing, because even if I bought all the silks and satins and disguised myself — I’m still not made of the stuff dreams are made of. My soul, where among the brand-name attributes of hot tamales — where is my soul, wounded like a deer, wounded, not dead although I myself have tried to disclose it and close it — I have tried to become like them or at least go with the flow — stick out my tongue — drop myself at their feet — feel at ease. For what, for Hecuba, for fiction, for frivolity?

— Social climber. Look at her. It’s sickening. Machista. Did you see that? Did you hear that? Wasn’t it disgusting how she melts with Scorsese? But did you see how brazen she was to the other poet? Name a living female poet that she likes — forget likes, how about acknowledges? Name one.

— Dickinson and Sor Juana.

— Living, I said, writing today, herself excluded.

— Wind up the mechanical monkey and watch it dance.

— You think there are more than three great poets per language in any given century? Let’s see Vallejo, Neruda, Darío, Lorca, Jiménez, Machado. Very few.

— It depends what you are looking for.

— I’m looking for the creators. If you want to accept the masters, then you include: Huidobro, Cernuda, Alberti, Alexandre, Salinas, Guillén. Yes, they are masters, but not creators.

— You’re too narrow.

— The Gates of Parnassus are narrow, not me. Alexandre may be a better poet than Lorca, but he is not greater. Lorca is common, but he is a creator. Many masters are better poets than the creators, but they’re not greater. Greatness isn’t better. Sometimes it’s worse. There are many singers with a better voice than María Callas. But she sang great. Greatness lies beyond description. Because it’s whole. Like the sun itself. Round and full of light. It’s not missing anything. And it fills you. It leaves you full. Surrounds you. It’s something that installs. And affirms its installation. It’s planted, implanted. And it stays put. Like an installation in a space. Like beauty itself.

— What a pity.

— The sum is less than its parts. What do we do with those legs, hands, lips, and elbows that are functional in and of themselves but that don’t contribute to the whole?

— How wonderful.

— Not wonderful at all.

— Yes, because it means that I can be one of those parts that can escape the totality.

— Why wouldn’t you want to contribute to the whole?

— Don’t get me wrong. A thinker thought, maybe it was Ortega y Gasset, that a country is in decadence when the parts no longer want to be part of the totality. It happened in the Soviet Union, it happened in Spain, it will happen in the States.

— But what I am saying is more profound. I have a puzzle. I assemble the puzzle. Every piece is in its place. But there are extra pieces. Beautiful pieces. They should not be thrown in the incinerator.

— You can start another puzzle with them. Everything has to work. Even the extras. Just let them be. Let them play the role of the arbitrary and capricious, the odds ’n ends.

— It seems to me that’s you.

— No, that’s the world. And chance should not be taken for granted. Chance is the puzzle that finds the parts that do not fit the whole. It is probably a matter of editing. Trimming here and there until everything fits.

— That’s what they always do. They cut people who have a life of their own. People like you are prime candidates. Because you breathe and you march to the rhythm of your own drum.

— I love what you just did, you bore your soul to us. You lifted your skirt and you said:

— Hey, sweetie, look at me.

But what we saw was not flesh — but we saw the soul, which is to say, all the sorrow we have inside.

— Don’t talk to me about sorrow. I am tired of pain, of blood. I want joy.

— It’s not anybody’s soul we want. Every day students come to me to bear their souls, manipulating sympathy through narcissistic exorcism. That’s not what a poet does. The poet is discreet — he shows us not his soul, but our souls, from a center we can all relate to — without falling into triviality.

— I declare, I read the worst paper in this city.

— You read it for the same reasons that Dante descended into hell, to understand the infrastructures and the super-structures.

— Yes, to know what garbage is. To know the commonest. And I think of the New York Times.

— Cold and pedantic compared to Le Monde. There you see a paper thinking. But the French think that the act of thinking is enough. If they think of a solution, they think they’ve solved the problem.

— How wonderful.

— Not wonderful at all. Blanchot writes a theory of an Infinite Conversation, but he doesn’t create the infinite conversation.

— The same happened to me with Theater and its Double. Artaud said what should be done in theater, but he didn’t do it. When I read it, I thought to myself, I am doing in Profane Comedy what he says must be done.

— So you are more American than you think.

— Why?

— Because you do what the French think.

— Excuse me. I also think.

— Then you are British. Britons are the sum of thought and action. That is why they are successful in war.

— Americans are successful in war.

— Not because we strategize, but because we spend billions on technology and weapons. Bombs away!

— I receive so many term papers — without a single thought — neatly packaged bibliographies.

— That’s because we teach them to crank out journalism of the worst kind. But what they say is democracy — ask everybody’s opinion — and then you end up with the voice of the moral majority. If it’s not about sex, it’s about tallying votes, or it’s about giving the impression to have the facts in hand, even if you don’t have them, invent statistics and sound objective.

— What do I know about culture? I was raised by television. I don’t watch it, but I was hooked as a kid. Totally hooked. I know that the cartoons influenced my style. People will write differently with computers.

— How can we bread our heads with something that has no soul?

— Maybe the Russians will soulify them.

— I will always write by hand. Shakespeare did not need a keyboard or spell-check, and he never spelled the same word twice.

— This is my question — how can we make the poetic spirit and the computer work in tune together — so they play the same music: the era of poetry and computers.

— What do you think of our president?

— We want action, not words, said our president, courting an invasion. It bothered me, the degradation of words. As if words were not action. They want action, not words. But words are action, when they work. Words are bullets, dynamite. But to say we don’t want words, we want action, tanks are action, bombs, but not words. Not true, Mr. President. Words are action, when they work.

— You’re full of shit. Why do words have to be bullets and bombs? That’s making it action. And it implies that you do believe that action is more powerful than words. You are uninformed.

— If you cannot formulate your thinking, what good is it to be informed? Information without knowing how to think is a luxury that should be taxed.

— Poetry is not a luxury.

— It is a luxury. Ask Cervantes in The Little Gypsy Girl. Ask Rubén Darío whether his princesses and marchionesses are a luxury. Ask Plato who threw the poets out of the Republic. Ask me who was thrown out of Rutgers for being a poet. What is a luxury? Is an air conditioner a luxury? I would love to be as luxurious in my poetry as an air conditioner in August — to have the capacity to blow so much wind, such a capacity to air us. And it’s a luxury. A gym is a luxury. I would like to exercise all my muscles in poetry. Okay. Money is a luxury. A useless necessity.

— What do you think of our mayor?

— Shrink or sink. He said that. He said:

We have to shrink or sink.

But think about it, I can’t shrink because when I do, I’m scared, I panic, and I sink. And the papers are quoting it: Shrink or sink. Is he kidding us? That’s our mayor. He is asking us to become clams, shrimp, in order not to sink. I sink if I shrink. But if I spread my arms and legs, and if I stretch out, I float, and if I try, try to speed my body along, paddling and flutter-kicking as I go, I’d swim like a goldfish through the bowl. But he is asking us to shrink. I don’t know how to swim, but I know his statement makes no sense at all. It defines him — he should shrink and sink, that’s what I think.

— What do you think of Isabel Allende?

— Wonderful. I find her wonderful. What she is doing — killing García Márquez a little more each day the same way Michael Jackson’s sisters are killing Michael Jackson.

— So you don’t like Isabel Allende?

— Like I said, she’s doing a wonderful job.

— What do you think about a WASP like Glenn Close playing in House of the Spirits? She looks like she never left New Hampshire.

— Perfect casting considering it was written for WASPs. The best definition I’ve heard of Allende was given to me by my mother, who said Allende is better than Márquez because she imitates him more clearly than himself so that when you’re done with the book, all your questions are answered, and there’s nothing left to the imagination. But, like my father says, my mother is above average in business and below average in literature.

— You underestimate your peers, particularly the live Latin ones. Márquez understands sexual politics and the human condition. Your mother could very well be la Mamá Grande.

— I don’t want my mother a la Márquez. I want Superman a la Nietzsche. Do I have to be good to be a good writer? We’re already beyond good and evil. Look at Melville, a misogynist, Pound, a fascist, Caravaggio, a murderer, and Burroughs, an evil genius.

— You’re as mad as a hatter, lady.

— Look, Foucault said: Politics is the continuation of war by other means. I say: Politics is the domestication of war. I don’t want to be a politician. I want to be a revolutionary.

— Who cares what Foucault said? Even Foucault didn’t care what Foucault said. I’m sure you’re taking him out of context anyway. You’re a danger to society. In a way, I’m concerned about being your friend. You don’t know anything about politics. Nothing at all. Yet you talk nonsense with such conviction, such hostility. You live in a fantasy world — protected by puppets — you’re afraid to mature.

— I’m not a puritan. I don’t believe that killing a man makes you less of an artist or that being loyal to your wife makes you a better politician. I don’t, I don’t. Look, there was a whore who offered her tits to the people in Italy and she became a senator. I believe in her. I want a beggar in our house of senate, a garbage man, a plumber, a poet.

— That’s totally ignorant. Whoever she was, I’m sure she was not elected to the Italian senate because she was a whore, you misogynist traitor.

— You said Mick Jagger’s wife should be president of Nicaragua. Because, quote — she is as smart as a whip — end quote. What makes her less of a whore for power? How can she become president of Nicaragua if she does not even live there, and yet you respect her because she is famous?

— You’re so self-indulgent, smugly ignorant. You think you’re charming the world with your ignorance. You’re impeding knowledge.

— Look, I’m not trying to be perfect.

— I am.

— I want to be human, all too human.

— You want your art to be perfect. Why can’t you see that in other areas you should be just as demanding? Otherwise, when you talk, you really sound like, like a fascist, knowing nothing about anything — and feeling empowered by your ignorance. It invigorates you to fear the unknown — and so you paint your fears with silly superstitions — mascara and lipstick — feeling the blindness of your being. What do I get hearing you babble? How can you say that there’s nothing wrong with cheating?

— I come from a different culture.

— No culture accepts…

— I, I myself accept all kinds of flaws.

— I believe in conscientiousness.

— You also believe in fame.

— To achieve fame one has to be respected by one’s peers. Success cannot be argued.

— I don’t want my cake if I can’t eat it too.

— You’ll have your cake at night with violins and chandeliers.

— This is the divorce of true minds. I cannot accept that because someone is famous he must be great.

— But you assume that it is noble and pure to be an outcast.

— Like Artaud, like Van Gogh, like Rimbaud.

— Take it from Mama Mona, they yearned for recognition. Do you think Emily Dickinson was happy bound in a nutshell of near oblivion — in the shadowed corners of yellowing pages — waiting to be drawn away and forever by four-eyed inky scholars who haven’t got a clue to this very day because they themselves have never experienced the whammo-bammo of drums and the jazzy last bip of the bipping rap of the world. Surely Emily Dickinson craved it obsessively. If you should ever have your day in the sun — knock on wood — God forbid a chorus of green faces will accuse you of selling out. See how Cenci told you that you got Yale because you pulled strings.

— What strings do I have? I’ve got more we-regret-to-inform-yous than John Kennedy Toole and his mother. And now that Jonathan Brent happens to pick my work out of a pile of dusty manuscripts, Cenci, my dear friend and mentor, who has always supported my work, tells me that it’s only because I have contacts.

— All your friends are crooks.

— Who?

— The sadomasochist whore.

— She’s no whore. She books appointments.

— Innocence should be suffocated if it fools itself. You wish you were Buñuel, but you’re Viridiana, a fool like Viridiana. You dream of palaces for beggars, but you wouldn’t toss them a dime in the streets, yet you offer to help crooks like that dominatrix who works at the Dungeon, feeding off human frailty! What happens in the bedroom affects the whole world. Sexuality and life are one in the same. If you keep believing in your fantasy world, someday you’ll wake up and it will be too late.

— When authorities back you, I doubt. No authority backed Pessoa. Women — I always say — when I read Simone de Beauvoir — I think — she’s a good writer, but she woulda been a much better — much better mother. That’s what I think of you, a good writer, but you woulda been a much better — much better mother. You coulda given birth to a great man. You chose the wrong career. You shoulda been a mother.

— And you, you shoulda been a woman.

— I won’t deny it. I woulda loved to be a mother.

— You’re green with envy.

— Envy is a splendid sensation, but I would never envy you. Envy involves someone greater than oneself. I woulda never published with lowlifes.

— That was a reprint. It can be reprinted a thousand times.

— I am an elitist. But I tell you, don’t brag that your book was published by Yale because Foucault recommended it. Nobody believes it anyway.

— Don’t tell me what I should say.

— I don’t care about authorities, institutions.

— I don’t care about institutions.

— Yes, you care. Institutions don’t care about you. But, yes, you care. They throw you a bone, they publish your book, or they publish my journal. But those are stark naked bones that wouldn’t draw a maggot.

— You wish you were a woman like me.

— I would love to be a woman, but not like you. I woulda been a mother. Remember, the fact that the institutions recognize you, doubt of yourself, start running. The translation prize got you the publication.

— It was the merit of the work.

— Merit is never recognized until it is too late.

— A romantic notion for unknowns to cling to. Many writers, the majority, have been recognized. Joyce, Ibsen, I don’t have to name them.

— I guarantee you a poem published in my journal will give you more recognition than all your books published in Spain.

— I don’t need your favors. Who are you? Am I like you? Would you see me like I am?

— You woulda been a better, a much better mother. I coulda been a Dostoevsky, a Schopenhauer, instead I’m an Uncle Vanya.

— Poetry is the art of losers. The people who win are losers. The more you lose, the more you can win.

— That’s not original. Original was the original sin. After that we have all been losing terrain. Rapidly.

— I’m nobody, and you are nobody too.

— But I’m not just anybody, not just anybody is nobody, anybody wishes he were somebody like nobody. Nobody takes somebody’s place and throws anybody off nobody’s throne. Understand me. Something is rotten in the state of the arts. The masses are in decadence and nobody is going to convince me otherwise. When the masses revolt, the masses are at their peak. I yearn for Danton, Napoleon, Joan of Arc — for some black man to rise and revolutionize me from horns to skirts. Make me better than I am. That’s what I want to be — a Don Quixote de la Mancha — a gentle, noble soul who rises up in madness. That’s what keeps the people healthy. Damn it. It’s important to understand the meaning of taste.

— Taste makes for the quality of life.

— Taste makes for bad taste too.

— It’s a principle of organization: who in the world belongs together and how do we recognize each other. Give the people the best, develop their taste, teach them to think. Many great thoughts come from the thought of a people. And many great men come from the thought of a single man.

— From his yearnings.

— If you yearn like I do, believe me, you’ll go much farther than me.

— How far have you gotten?

— To the greatest yearning. Yearning for hunger like a rat’s mouth and satisfying myself with a piece of cheese that gives me bad breath. In other words, I eat it all up.

— Well, tell me, now whattaya gonna do?

— Wait for my liberty to come. It’ll fall out of the sky like a gift from the gods. I’ll make your life so, so impossible. Guerrilla warfare here and there. Until you grant me my independence.

— Who is the stronger? The bamboo that bends in the gale or the elm that won’t.

— The one that won’t — no matter what — has dignity.

— What is dignity?

— The measure of liberty.

— I mean, which is stronger: the island that sells itself and eats well, or the one that stands tall and dies of hunger and solitude.

— Which is freer?

— Neither one is free. Everything belongs to something. Solitude goes wherever you go, traveler. But like Don Antonio Machado used to say, if there’s wine, drink wine, and if there’s no wine, what’s your problem, brother, drink the water.

— Is this all you brought me?

— You asked me for the menstruation piece.

— I need more. Something longer. Everything you read me the other day. This is full of English. I want more Spanish. Mixing languages like this is typical of your social class. It’s your hang-up, not mine. You discuss philosophical issues in English and leave your feelings in Spanish, reinforcing Hispanic stereotypes — all sex like Almodóvar, all tango — and you leave all the cerebral, intellectual speculations to the Anglo-Saxon tongue. How insulting to Hispanidad!

— But Cenci, you only asked me to bring the menstruation scene.

— But I don’t want them to say I’m publishing you because we’re friends.

— Them who?

— Olmo-Olmo.

— You care what the sophist says?

— No, but it doesn’t help. He ripped you apart the other day.

— For god’s sake—I said—leave her alone.

— She’s all washed up. Talking about gobbers and scabs and snot and lashes and tears. Why doesn’t she pick a theme to inspire change in mankind? What a waste of talent to talk about human waste. What’s she trying to prove?

— She must have an ace up her sleeve.

— She thinks dialogue is everything. She should work on description. Take someone’s face for example and describe it. Because she loses track of her themes.

— And you lose track of your characters.

— Mine is an allegory of lost souls. You know what a dead man did to me? He copied my narrative techniques.

— Schizo-realism.

— My school is not called Schizo-realism. It’s called Story Workshop.

— Schizo-realism.

— Quit calling it Schizo-realism.

— I think it’s more original. I just don’t like the psychological reference.

— Cut it out. The dead man was plagiarizing my narrative technique. A solemn voice rose over a shrill one. Then a faint whistle replied with an awkward flute, a real amateur. The guy wasn’t dead yet, but he was about to die, so I didn’t want to accuse him of plagiary.

— So what did you tell him?

— Nothing, I let it go. After all, he was about to die and I still have a career ahead of me. You scribbled something out here.

— I already told you why. It’s one thing to publish a book as a book. A fragment is another story.

— What did it say here?

—“Today I woke up happy. Something transformed me last night.” I thought it was over-the-top to publish as a fragment. The dream really starts with: “It was a classroom. Jabalí was teaching.” I was sitting in the first row at my desk. All the students were preschoolers, except me. I was the oldest and felt self-conscious because I had my period. My uniform was a knee-length chiffon jumper, the kind that swirls up in the wind. I was wearing bobby socks and moccasins. My hair was cut like Audrey Hepburn’s. I was taking an exam on Rubén Darío. Jabalí came over to read my exam and whispered in my ear:

— The Boy. The Boy.

— What’s with the boy?

— Don’t wax theoretical. Sign your exam: The Boy. That will do it. The Boy gets an A no matter what you write. Don’t sign your name. The Boy is unforgettable. I’ll be sure to write The Boy a letter of recommendation for Yale.

Then the bell rang, and the students got up. I didn’t dare get up. I signaled you to check the back of my skirt to see if it was stained because the Kotex had ridden up my butt.

— Does it show? It feels like a bun up my butt.

— No, it’s okay.

But I knew it showed. Just then the bell rang, and we all sat back down. Then a three-year-old boy with a naughty face hopped on my lap and grabbed hold of my breasts, making me three years old again, three naughty years old, three worldly years old. And whichever way I looked, there was his little face of wonder in front of me, and he was milking my breasts, guanábanas, for all that I had inside, and all that I ever knew was in his little hands, and he wouldn’t stop squeezing and staring and grinning relentlessly like a ventriloquist’s dummy, until I entered his world. There were crags and cliffs, and I was climbing a mountain, following the barefoot boy straight up the path. His mother was calling from below that it was naptime. I recognized her voice. It was Lourdes, my cousin Eduardo’s wife.

— Lourdes—I asked—remember me?

She looked at me the way Dulcinea did the time I left her in the kitchen without food. Three weeks went by and you forgot all about her. The truth is I didn’t dare to face her for fear she might be dead. And one day, I said:

— What about Dulcinea?

We went to the kitchen to see if she was dead. No longer was she a Scottish terrier. Her coat was orange and knotted, and her tail was long and hairy like a collie. How could it be that she was still alive and fat with so much hair around her eyes that she hardly saw what was going on around her, but she recognized me, and she looked me square in the eye, letting me know she was so lonely, so hungry, she had been eating books, eating empires of pain.

— Hey, dyke—I said—what brings you here?

— I had to leave Eduardo because I was starving for affection. We weren’t having sex, and I wanted a baby.

I followed the boy down the mountain and rushed to greet Lourdes.

— It’s naptime—she said to her son.

— And what brings you here? — she asked me.

— I’m reading Darío. I know his work inside-out, but I’m researching this article because I forgot the date 1898 and the meaning of Modernism. You’re Parnassian, aren’t you?

— Actually, I’m a lesbian. Son—she said to the boy—it’s naptime.

Then she spread her legs, and when she spread them, the boy stuck his head inside her uterus.

— Doesn’t it hurt? — I asked her.

The boy pulled his head out and said to me:

— Nah, it doesn’t hurt her. Me neither. See how my face is all wrinkled, I’m a shar-pei puppy, my skin is all wrinkled, but not from suffering, experience, or maturity — they’re tender caresses of the womb — and I bet you wish you had a mama like mine so you could tuck your sleepy head inside her and pull it out refreshed. Look at me, outside in Conservatory Park — snuggling inside my mama — even with my eyes open the sun doesn’t bother me — it’s like nursing but even better because I don’t even have to suck her tits — I just stick my head in and pull it out — like a sunflower — it’s a sunflower of tenderness — nobody gets more tenderness than me — and it’s hard to know if I should grow up or keep mushing up like a ball of clay — it took a lot of squishing and squashing to squoosh back inside once I learned to talk and walk and return to the womb.

He scrunched his face back inside. And that was the last I heard of him until I woke up.

— It was your duende.

— Well, he certainly wanted to possess me. He knew I was bleeding. He caught the smell of blood and was fascinated by it, like dogs that recognize better than men when a woman is bleeding. They immediately start sniffing the crotch, getting high, inhaling blood, death, life, sex. Menstruation was my first experience with mortality. When I used to play tennis with my friends, our conversations were based on this fact of life.

— Did it come?

— Nope, not yet.

— We’ll all get it, sooner or later.

My grandmother and her friend Elvira Matienzo used to read the obituaries together every morning, browsing for the names of their friends. I guess they awaited the news of death the same way we awaited the first drop of blood.

— I like: “Today I woke up happy.”

— Give me a pen so I can put it back.

— No, send me more fragments. And your curriculum vitae. So they won’t say I’m only publishing it because we’re friends. That Olmo-Olmo’s got a big mouth.

— Forget Olmo-Olmo. Leave him alone. He’s all washed up.

— I practically bore him. He is my intellectual son. But I’m sick and tired of his stinginess. Get this, he stole five computers, I asked him for one, and he gives me none. I gave him everything. Him, zip. With friends like that, who needs enemies.

— He told me:

— What’s a rich woman like you doing teaching three courses? You shouldn’t have to teach.

Can you believe I fell for it? I actually felt rich and dropped the courses. The next thing I know, he signed up to teach my courses. And now I don’t have a pot to piss in.

— That’s the sophist for you. You can’t trust a word he says.

— What a great country!

— Why did you say that?

— Why not? The greatness of a country is created by its poets. If a country has great poets, it’s a great country. You can tell if a country is rich if its poetry is rich. And why not merge the wealth of Martí, Darío, Neruda, and Vallejo with the wealth of Whitman and Dickinson.

— Because of the Eliots and Pounds who are racists and fascists.

— Yes, but Neruda hated Americans. We have to start tearing down the walls dividing our two Americas. And we — you and I — have to be the spokesmen because we’re bilingual.

— You may be bilingual, but I’m loyal to Neruda and Vallejo.

— So am I. Neruda was an ambassador.

— We can’t be ambassadors because we don’t have a country. Because Puerto Rico is not a country with any power in the world, I won’t be considered a great poet. Spain created great poets with its empire and made them known around the world through its empire. Great poetry has always stemmed from the economic prosperity of a people. That is why we have Quevedo and Góngora.

— What about Julia de Burgos and Palés Matos?

— They perpetuate our oppression — stuck, delayed in the eternal traffic jam of la guaracha. We want our liberty.

— And you think that liberty is going to liberate us?

— It’s going to free us from our inferiority complex. Because if we were already free we wouldn’t have the excuse that we’re not free because you, American, denied and deprived us of liberty.

— It’s so juvenile to point the finger. It’s your fault I’m not free. It’s your fault I can’t finish the book. It’s your fault I’m stuck. Stop blaming. The one who blames is to blame. For not accepting his own guilt. I’m to blame. It’s my fault. If I’m not free, it’s my fault. That’s how a people begins to liberate itself. We have an obligation as poets to speak words of truth, even if politicians turn them into putty in their filthy hands and point the finger at us for ridding reality of the blame. If I’m not a great poet, I’m not going to blame my country because it’s a colony. No, it’s my own fault. And I wash my hands like Pontius Pilate. There. I’ve washed away the guilt.

— You want to oppress your people.

— I want to stop thinking like my people.

— You want to stop being Puerto Rican. You want to become American.

— I don’t have to become what I am.

— You’re American? Listen to her. She says she is American.

— Why should I deny I was born here?

— But where here? Stop clowning around.

— So what do you think about Fidel? Tell me what you think.

— That’s a frivolous question. Fidel transformed my life.

— Well, if he did transform your life, then it’s not a frivolous question.

— You asked it in such a casual manner.

— Ask her seriously, c’mon, in a deep voice with your chin held high. Not casual like:

— Do you want butter or cream cheese on your toast?

— Never ask a Cuban about Fidel. It’s like talking sex with your parents.

— You always talk nationalities.

— Because Chicanos don’t have a nation. Wherever I go, I am considered to be the maid of the world. When in Germany, I’m Turkish, when in France, I am Algerian, when in Puerto Rico, I am Dominican. You know, she’s not asking you a frivolous question. She honestly wants to know what you think of Fidel.

— I refuse to be baited by a flippant tongue.

— Do you have a gut feeling about him? If he transformed your life, you must have a gut feeling about him. That’s what I want to hear. But no, you are afraid I am going to judge you: reactionary or revolutionary. But no, I just want honest, goddamn guts — do you have guts? Speak to me from your guts, from your exile, from your transformation.

— Don’t psychoanalyze me.

— I hate psychoanalysis.

— I don’t, it’s a very serious discipline.

— Then I’m going to tell you what you think of Fidel.

— It’s a complex issue.

— I’ll give you a complex answer: he’s a Bastard with a capital B. However, he has done some good things for the Cuban people. That’s what your guts say.

— Don’t speak for my guts. You don’t know me.

— Don’t pick on her. Let her finish her thoughts.

— She has no thoughts. And you, chicana mía, what do you think about the situation in Mexico?

— So far from God, so close to the United States. I am the maid of the world. I am married to a white man now, but I don’t reap the fruits of his privilege. When we go to a restaurant, they still seat us near the kitchen. Now my white man has become red because he married the maid of the world. I am the one who holds up the lines at airports and bus terminals. I am always the suspect, and my baby is strip-searched because he looks like me. He is the only baby who is busted.

— I want to know what this has to do with identities.

— Poets and anarchists are always the first to go.

— Where?

— To the front line. Wherever it is.

— I love it when she slips into a trance. I long for those stretches of glazed silence.

— How? Like this?

— No, like this. Wide open without blinking. Only then can I slip into bed and light up the set without any trepidation.

— How can you stand her? Why don’t you fight for your rights? Even in India women are allowed to watch television if they have one. Don’t indulge her habit of rocking. She is disconnected enough from society. She doesn’t watch television or read the newspapers. How can she write if she doesn’t know what is happening in the world. She should go to jury duty. Or town hall. I bet she doesn’t even vote. If she would get a job. I offered her a job as a messenger. I need someone to run visas to Rockefeller Plaza. $50 a pop under the table, papi. But she doesn’t want a job either. So what time does lazybones roll out of bed?

— Mumi, she reads all night long.

— That’s not work, hon, that’s laziness, which is hereditary like drunkenness. Look at her father, sitting on the sofa reading the papers all day long. While his wife brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan.

— Rocking in children is a sign of loneliness.

— It’s unhealthy. She has to exercise her brain or she’ll end up like her aunt Violeta with Alzheimer’s, which is also hereditary. You talk about her trances, sugar, all you have to do is talk to her to know that she lives on Pluto. Five, right, five. She is like Sibyl. If she doesn’t like what they’re telling her, she disconnects and takes on the next personality. Shielding herself from the solitude she suffered as a child. But I was there as a witness to it all. She makes a mountain out of a molehill.

— It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It only matters that she believes it’s true.

— You’re doing her no favor by humoring her. It’s all a lie. Encourage her to write about her past, but afterwards, show it to me, and I’ll chop her demons down to size. She has to confront reality in black and white. Look how she is always twirling her hair and rocking like a goosey girl. And yet, she is such a powerful public speaker. Perfectly calm. Sibyl, right, papi. It’s Doña Juanita’s fault for not letting her play with other children. We used to break into their garden and shoot birds with slingshots. I was the best shot. She used to watch us from the window. Doña Juanita wouldn’t let her come out and play with us. She used to dress in pastels and ruffles. Now look at her. I’m going to buy her a pink sweater from Ferragamo because she looks so pretty in cheerful colors. Why does she always dress in black like Hamlet, mourning ghosts? Playing the role of a village artist. Insecurity. Why does she have to pay $100 for a haircut? Insecurity. I’ll pulverize her delusions. Calling Lourdes a lesbian. It’s a shame that she has to define herself by projecting her sins onto others. She doesn’t like me. Because I tell her:

— Come here, you flaming fag, and look at yourself in my eyes.

— No thanks, Mumi, I have my own mirror.

— You could be free like me if you go to therapy.

— I don’t want to be like you.

— It’s not what you want to be. It’s what you are. You don’t want to accept yourself as you are.

— It is so if you think so.

— You think so. You think so.

— No, I don’t think so. But if you think so.

— I think so.

— Well, I am not if you think so. I am if I think so. Only, if I think so. Myself is not yourself. And it is not if you think so. Only if I think so. And I don’t think so. So, if you think so, in my book, it is not so. Not if you think so, it is not.

— It was a theater with plush red drapes. It was your first gig at Radio City, and you were playing a Mahler symphony on electric guitar. I was sitting alone in the first row with nobody behind me in the second row except for a petite woman. The rest of the hall was packed with restless, confused rockers who hadn’t heard anything like it, so they didn’t know whether to cheer or boo. I clenched my fists and focused all my good energy:

— Let it be great, please, let her bring the house down, blow the roof off, set the house on fire, oh please God, show us some love tonight, give us magic, fire, delight, and all the money in sight.

Suddenly shorty in the second row jumped to her feet and started singing in Mick Jagger’s raw voice. You were playing the guitar staring at the floor, and she turned her back to you to embrace the crowds, raising her fist, inciting them to sing along with her voice of oregano:

— Hey! Heeey-ho!

The rockers went crazy cheering and clapping:

— Look who it is!

— Heeey-ho! — she sang to the crowds.

— Hey-ho. Heeey-ho! — the crowds sang back to her.

I was rubbing my temples, and my head was bursting.

— Rain, rain, shower me.

— Hey! Heeey-ho! — she thumbed over her shoulder—Follow the music. Listen.

But when she pointed at you, you dropped the guitar and ran backstage. The crowds were screaming for her to sing without you.

— What happened? — she asked. We were fantastic.

— You were fantastic—I said. I loved when you gave the heys and the ho’s. You were the only one who understood. I must say, however, that when you sang to the audience, you turned your back to her as if she were your back-up musician. Wait here, I’ll talk to her backstage.

— What a lack of respect—you muttered. Yelling vulgarities.

— They loved her, and she loved you.

— Sorry seven times.

— You can ask me to say sorry seven times, fourteen times. But a woman you don’t even know, a woman who could make your career.

— Seven times—you insisted—on her knees.

But I knew you would accept her apology. She came backstage and embraced you.

— Excuse me, I didn’t turn my back on you. And if I did, it’s because I was feeling the music on my back, and I wanted to confront it face to face. Back to back. Front to back, back to front, inside. It was an injection of vitality, a shot of ho’s.

— How was that hey-ho?

— Heeey-ho! — she sang to you, took your hand and together you walked on stage. The fans stood up, whistling and screaming.

— Success. Success—I called my father—Full house.

— You sang? — he asked quietly.

— No.

— Did you play an instrument?

— No.

— Were you on stage?

— No.

— So what success is it for you? Skedaddle. Skedaddle before it is too late.

— What is he saying? — you yelped in the background—That I wasn’t a hit? Tell him who sang with me! A full house, tell him. Skedaddle? He should go skedaddle himself.

— I thought you said she wasn’t there—he said.

— I can’t skedaddle. People who skedaddle don’t win grants.

— What grants are you winning? Listen, I don’t want to tell you what to do, honey, but if I were you, I’d skedaddle, skedaddle as soon as I could.

— Exactly. That’s what you are, the buffer between the creator and the public. And to think I nearly blew it, running off the set. If it weren’t for you, the music wouldn’t have reached the people. Of course, I can’t forget about the celebrity who carried the melody that had no melody, because it was amorphous, and gave it a form of expression that the masses could understand. And you, backstage, talking to her, talking to me, you were the success. But there’s just one latch that doesn’t click. I swear, I would have not run off the stage. I would have invited her on stage to sing with me. Or I would have joined her in the audience so she would not hog the spotlight.

— Unabashed narcissism. It’s not you. It’s Tess. She doesn’t know who she is. The singer is her arrested libido telling her to turn her back on you, the composer. But the composer is her other self. She is all the characters in her dream. That’s why you don’t identify with the composer. Because it’s her personality. She is so defensive that she even guards herself against success, sabotaging herself under the pretext of dignity because she has no confidence in her creative power. Even a simple gesture — the singer turning to face the audience — makes her feel weak. It’s her weakness because you make her weak, and that’s why she disguises her weakness with your face. And the singer, who has an accessible voice of her own, seeks liberation from you. But her third ego — the only one she accepts and she recognizes as herself — is the mending one — that’s why it has her face. At the end, the voice of her father, the voice of her conscience, tells her: Escape from the only self that you dare to recognize as yourself. Develop your own voice. Why do you have to be her stage-hand and sell yourself short? Skedaddle.

— Don’t listen to her. You made it all possible.

— But you didn’t write the music. Skedaddle. You didn’t sing it either. Skedaddle. The audience applauded the composer and the singer, but nobody clapped for you. And she says you’re the buffer, but you weren’t the buffer. The singer was the buffer. Skedaddle.

— But you were the power behind the throne.

— Do you want to be behind the throne or on it?

— You are a star either way.

— Don’t patronize her. Her self-esteem is low enough. Always sacrificing. You want to be a translator? Being a translator is a noble business if you’re Baudelaire translating Poe. But you still have to write Flowers of Evil. Or are you expecting her to write all your poems for you? Your name will always be in a smaller font. Why should you sacrifice? I see how much you have inside. Don’t let your hunger eat you up. She takes your friendship for granted. You don’t envy her, you don’t feel jealousy, you don’t feel anything dark inside your heart, when you see that she’s shining because you are her cheerleader with twinkling eyes. You clap, they clap. If I had you, I’d have Leo Castelli by now. I need a Tess.

— Go ahead and take her.

— I could not exploit her like you do. I would encourage her to finish her PhD. Find her own voice. She is your emotional crutch. If you don’t write, you blame her, you spill your coffee, you blame her, you bite your tongue, you blame her. Poor thing, she’s too young to know any better.

— I wonder why she thinks you’re so easy.

— Don’t step in her snare. You’re attacking me to defend yourself.

— You think that if you had a Tess you would have a show at the Whitney. You think Van Gogh was Van Gogh because he had Theo. Theo was Theo because he had Van Gogh.

— You need to do some soul searching. Don’t let yourself be swayed by her every need, cater to your own needs. Establish a reputation with people who can pay you. Octavio Paz, García Márquez. Build a career. Why be a knight errant? Nobody can squeak a peep because you draw your sword to defend her. But artists need to feel frustration in order to create beauty. Unrecognized, she strives, pampered she dies. If you raise ravens, they’ll take your eyes out. And believe me. She’ll leave you blind.

— I’m not a raven. I have no eyes. I’m blind, deaf, and dumb.

— Harmless as a fly. Helpless as a crab claw. You’ve snapped at plenty of people — so skip your innocent poet routine — no one believes it anymore — you’re ambitious. But poetry, poetry has always been the art of the underground. It sees in the dark. And creates at twilight. Beyond twilight, it loses its sight. To shine a light is to bare her stitches. No one wants to see the history of its wounds — the myth is what matters — obscurity and transcendence.

— No wonder — I thought. A black cat had crossed my path. I was on my way to Iris Pagán’s house for a reading that night. There she told me that a dead man was hanging on my neck.

— Rub a raw steak all over your naked body.

— Bloody?

— You can’t avoid it.

— A dead man on me?

— No good comes of him. He rides hunchback.

— I don’t feel him.

But the cadaver started to trigger my imagination. I couldn’t sleep a wink that night. I told you about it.

— Put a bloody piece in a sack with twenty-five cents and chuck it.

— Where?

— On the train tracks.

After bathing with the raw meat that gave me swirly golden hives and rashes on my back, we head straight for Penn Station.

— Did you put the dime inside?

— Twenty-five cents.

— Didn’t she say ten cents?

— No, it was twenty-five with the body in a potato sack.

The departure was called at midnight sharp. We snuck down the stairwell, taking laps down and around the corners — running spooked to death — feeling the pennies jingling and the steak bouncing — until we reached the deserted subway where rats were running along the tracks. You kept a discreet watch while I closed my eyes and threw it:

— Get away. Shoo-shoo. Eat your hex. I’ve got a scarf in my fist, tied in a knot — go choke on the knot of your own wicked plot. Grrrrr. Grunts. Gurgles. Get away. Shoo-shoo. No more harm. Candles white, embers blue, salt, pepper, vinegar too. Get away. Shoo-shoo. Foo on you.

The dead man fell headfirst out of the sack, and toward him came a feverish pack of hungry rats. They smelled the meat. That’s when the train came by and ran over him, but spared the rats lurking under the tracks, and they finished him off.

— How tragic for the dead man. Three times dead.

— Maybe more. Who was it?

— Flesh wants flesh.

— What will our lives offer death?

— Phew, it was an exorcism.

— It was Pancho Corzas.

— He’s dead.

— He wasn’t in mine. The whole world thought he was, but he wasn’t in mine.

— He died in ’84 before your brother.

— You’re wrong. Bianca had thought so too. It turns out it was a ploy for him to paint far from the madding crowd. Better dead. So other painters wouldn’t envy him. His prices soared at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. And, furthermore, while everyone took him for dead, he was doing his best work, tucked away in Europe since ’84. I saw his paintings — the ones he did over there — his swirling yellows stood out from the surrounding blacks, drawn with a magic marker that had the marks of death.

— That’s what must’ve brought him back to life. I’ve always thought the best things happen in the closet.

— You should have seen Bianca’s face when he walked through the door, sober, wearing a French beret. They called me immediately from Mexico. I told Iris Pagán about it.

— Before or after she died?

— After, and she told me she wanted to visit him and see his new series. I felt this dream had something vital to do with me.

— Maybe with joining the world again.

— What do you mean?

— Start working outside.

— No, with my book. I thought the structure was capsizing. It came back to life like Pancho with new visions.

— This book, I’ve always thought so, but now that I’ve actually read it, I’m even more convinced. You’ve created all the corners, now you have to fill them with sculptures, bagatelles, diamonds. What’s the hurry? There’s no rush? It’s a biography. And your life has just begun. You can write other books and keep this one on our nightstand. If you publish it now, how many other dreams, thoughts, fights will come — and you can replace the worst with the best. And the best — it’s a matter of timing — when you continue living — you’ll realize — wait a minute, this fragment I wrote two years ago is obsolete. I’m talking about The Piano when I should be talking of the latest movie in town. That’s how time is. And you’re trying to conquer reality. How are you going to know it’s ended if you are still alive?

— And what do I do with the malicious people who come to me and tell me:

— Did you finish it?

— Almost.

— You have been saying that for years. Did your juices dry up? Watch out, you’re losing credibility. And what about the grants you won to finish it?

— Most of it is complete.

— The penumbral zone of past impressions. But what about the future?

— Future editions can add future episodes.

— Wouldn’t it be wonderful to write a book all your life — a book that’s about your life with all the elements of a biography — but it’s not an autobiography. Not a dream play. Not a novel. Not a poem.

— A lifetime work in progress. It’s a terrifying concept. You would be amazed how many times I thought I was finishing it, when another idea struck my head, another thunderstorm hit, and other pieces fell into the bottomless pit, forming new geometries, new blocks, and other rooms appeared that I’ve had to decorate.

— A quarter to the left, 1st panel, a quarter to the left, 2nd panel, a quarter to the left, 3rd panel, a quarter to the left, 4th panel. And then, all of them, at the same time, a quarter to the right. And there you have it: musical fugue.

— But don’t they fall into the same order if you are turning all of them a quarter to the left, and then a quarter to the right.

— Look, look at them. Did they fall into the same order?

— No, but I don’t understand why not.

— Tess, honey, you understand. Explain it to them. They don’t have a logical bone in their bodies. They are poetic.

— Mona, would you like to be called artistic? No, you are an artist. She is a poet. And he is a philosopher.

— But they’re not logical.

— We are very logical. And don’t embark Tess in your same boat. Tess understands Paco Pepe and me. You say we are confusing.

— What logic is there in sprinkling paprika on my butterball turkey? I’m a maniac for order and cleanliness. That’s why I unzipped the gray cat’s coat.

— Paco Pepe believes in magic. He’ll sprinkle his magic powder and pour his magic syrup into the rice. You’ll see how it tastes.

— Tess, Tess.

— Just a moment, Makiko.

— What about the composition?

— Look, Tess, look.

— Fire, Mona, fire.

— The tablecloth is burning, burning, burning.

— Water, water.

— Not water. Use napkins. Not water.

— Why not water?

— Not water.

— Why not water, water?

— Water extinguishes fire. That Mona is always talking about logic. What is the logic of using napkins to put the fire out?

— My whole party ruined. My whole table burned.

— Quick, add more paprika to the turkey. And more Coca-Cola to the rice now that she is busy.

— My whole dinner ruined. My tablecloth in flames, in flakes. Ruined.

— Absurd, did you notice, nobody thought to blow out the candles.

— It would’ve blown out the magic and the party hasn’t even begun.

— Someone’s knocking. Get the door.

— Jonathan, you’re late.

— Qué viva el Imperio de los Sueños!

— Qué viva Jonathan Brent!

— Qué viva Paco Pepe!

— Qué viva kiko!

— Qué viva Tess!

— Damn, they’re giving me a complex. Always Empire of Dreams. Paco Pepe, don’t you like my new book better?

— They’re apples and oranges.

— But which do you prefer?

— You haven’t lost your touch. You keep growing.

— But I want to know which one you prefer. Please, tell me, please.

— I would never tell you that.

— Then I’ll never know the truth.

— There’s a style for every taste.

— Tell me, Jonathan, how is it doing?

— Well, I don’t know if I should tell you this. Well, okay, they are bidding on the paperback rights.

— Who, Jonathan, who?

— I’m not at liberty to tell you this.

— Tell me, I won’t tell anybody.

— The Italians and the Germans want it. And even the Spaniards want to translate it into Spanish.

— It was written in Spanish.

— Does Yale have the rights in Spanish?

— It’s the only rights you don’t have.

— Did your publishers in Spain ever pay you?

— I know what you want — you want to eat me up. I sold you Manhattan for $24.

— And some glass beads.

— And now you want me to surrender Spain?

— They never paid you?

— Not a penny. But I read in The Glass Graduate, it’s a problem that has existed in Spain since Cervantes’ time. They tell you they print 1,000 copies, when they print 5,000 copies — and then they reprint the 2nd edition, and they don’t tell you there is a 2nd edition. I know what you’re thinking. Hey, don’t get any funny ideas.

— Don’t get excited. Suppose it only sells a few dozen copies, then the deals fall through.

— Who? I won’t tell anybody. Top secret.

— It begins with V.

— Vantage, Viking, Vintage. Is it Vintage? They published Joyce. That’s my first choice.

— It depends who offers me more. But maybe I’ll keep the rights. We won’t be able to sell as many copies as the commercial presses, but if we can unload a couple thousand copies a year, we’ll do all right in the long term.

— Keep your classics in stock. What would you have if you sold Gertrude Stein or Eugene O’Neill?

— Suppose they make me an offer that I cannot resist.

— How big is cannot resist?

— Shh, come, lend me your ear.

— That’s all? You can resist that.

— But this is poetry. It’s a nice offer.

— What a dramatic table setting.

— My whole party ruined.

— No, Mona, chance as collaborator. It was just a piece of cotton and now it’s material for history. The tablecloth tells a mystery. Life is experimenting. So what if it’s burned? It’s still beautiful.

— Is it better than mine? It is, isn’t it? Admit it. It is better than mine. Isn’t it?

— You tell me. Is that what you feel? Because then I’ll go with the better.

— She is a better painter than I am a writer. She is. She has to be. These four panels of a musical fugue come out of freedom and solitude. Nobody interferes with her muse. Oh, I am painly jealous.

— Plainly zealous.

— What? What is my kindred spirit saying? It was all so much hustle and bustle sculpting the body of Jane, cutting piece by piece, until I made her scream: Homo poeticus.

— You stole it from me. I told you I love it. It was my love you wanted. You stole my fire. I no longer have a muse. Go. Go with her.

— If she is a better painter than you a writer it’s your duty to get on your knees and tell her:

— Mona, you outdid yourself. You outdid myself.

— I wish I could do as well and alone. Being free of these other voices that persecute me. The blue mask of Homo poeticus—I gave you the 2nd panel. You took it from me. It’s mine.

— Nerves of steel, lady, Homo poeticus is mine.

— You flung the sketch in the garbage. I pulled it out. And because I wanted it, you desired it.

— It’s sexual bread. Feel it.

— A round, puffy ass.

— If it’s sexual bread it’s like Mona. Give me some.

— What are these people going to think? Homo poeticus was mine.

— Yes, but it was me who recognized it. I told you it was good. And you set fire to my desire.

— As if thunder could be stolen from the map of the universe.

— Yes, it can, and sometimes the imitation outdoes the original. And it all makes sense. Unguent. Perfume. Laquearia. In the dripping red panel. Light my fire, Mona, my desire.

— How many olives ya got here?

— Got five. Ate four. One left. But you ain’t getting it.

— Let me have it.

— Okay, eat it. Four for me. One for you. The world is fine like this. It’s good for my stomach. I ate three. You watched me eating the fourth. And you asked for the fifth. I gave it to you. You asked. How kind. I ate four. Gave you one. Did you want to eat what I had — you had less than me — didn’t protest — are you hungry — why did you let me eat the other four — without saying a word — and now you even have the courtesy of asking permission — I am the boss because I didn’t mind eating the other four — I didn’t think about you — that’s what made me the boss — I am still hungry — are you satisfied — I gave you my olive — a pit of my appetite. The world is fine if you feel fine. I ate four. You only one. We are compatible. We ate five.

— Pum, pum, Paco. Pum, pum.

— She’s poetical, but she lacks Poetics.

— Sí, sí, sí.

— It’s chaotic. She’s looking for the order of chaos, but she lacks order too.

— Sí, sí, sí.

— Hey, watch out for Xana. She just told Paco you don’t have a Poetic.

— And what did Paco say?

— He smiled: sí, sí, sí.

— Sí, she has a Poetic, or sí she doesn’t have a Poetic?

— I don’t know. He said: sí, sí, sí.

— Like the Associated Free State. Puerto Ricans are semicolons. They can’t decide on the period or the comma. Of course she doesn’t know I have a Poetic because she has never read my work.

— Why do you care what she says?

— Why do you tell me what she says?

— Pum, pum, Paco. Pum, pum.

— And what about mine — aren’t mine soft too?

— Yes, they are soft, but hers — touch hers, she really has soft hands.

— Aren’t mine really soft too?

— Yes, they are soft, but hers, sheer silk. She hasn’t washed a dish in her life.

— You’re not kidding.

— Spoiled. Spoiled rotten.

— Hey, give me your hand.

— Why should I give you my hand, simply because you asked for it, without any certainty about a friendship, something that made you think I’d give it to you simply because you were going to ask me for it, I was going to give it to you, I wasn’t about to refuse it, but my pleasure isn’t your pleasure, yours is in my hand, mine is in refusing it. Tant pis. ça m’est égal.

— And it is quite true what our royal highness said.

— What did I say? I can’t remember.

— She suffers the collective amnesia of her people.

— What? What did I say? I already forgot.

— I won’t forgive what you said to me. I do remember it.

— What did I say? I’m sorry.

— I won’t forgive you.

— I won’t forgive you either unless you tell me what I said. Please tell me.

— I forgot already. It’s on the tip of my tongue.

— The chair I sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed on the marble, where the glass held by standards wrought with fruited vines. I was reading with five feminists. Three of them had already read. And I wondered:

— Why aren’t they sitting in the chair?

They had told me:

— You can’t read with Tess because there is one chair behind the table. Only one of you can sit down.

But none of the three sat down. They read standing up. And the throne was empty — waiting for me — from which a golden cupidon peeped out. Another hid his eyes behind his wing. Doubled the flames of seven branched candelabra. So I was very angry because they thought I could not read well without Tess, and when my turn came, I sat in the chair and stole the show. Now a woman complained:

— Stand up. We cannot see you.

— Madam—I answered—there is a throne here and I am going to sit on it.

— Pum, pum, Paco, let’s dance.

— Later, Xana, let me enjoy this cigar.

— Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

— I feel Croatian, surrounded by all these languages.

— And, and, when we were children, staying at the Archduke’s, my cousin, he took me out on a sled.

— You stole that sled from my diary. It was not my cousin’s, it was my brother Benny’s.

— No, she took it from Rosebud, Rosebud, the sled in Citizen Kane. What Orson Welles had lost was a sled — his childhood — in a big Bonfire of the Vanities.

— The fire, the bonfire — I still see it — it is burning in flames my eyes. Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, in the forest of the night, what immortal hand, or sight, build thy fearful symmetry.

— Oh, be drunk, be always drunk.

— Yes, be always drunk with fire.

— Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forest of a night.

— I see him coming.

— Fire, Mona, fire.

— Reflecting light upon the table as the glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, from satin cases poured in rich profusion, in vials of ivory and colored glass unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, unguent, powdered, or liquid — troubled, confused and drowned the sense in odors, stirred by the air that freshened from the window.

— Yes, crack a window — it’s stuffocating. The air is not going through the chimney. Start a fire. Wood, wood. It’s Christmas.

— Well, she stole my diary. That was written in my diary. And down we went in the mountains, there, were you feel free.

— And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight.

— He said, Mona, Mona, hold on tight. And down we went, in the mountains, there where you feel free. I have never experienced that wild freedom of death again. Sometimes, like now, the fire burned like a tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forest of the night.

— Mona, look at my new glasses.

— Spectacular. Put them on.

— I am seeing the tygers burning bright.

— Wear them, you’ll experience ants tyghding back your sight.

— Cushions, give me cushions. I need comfort. I need to feel cozy, mushy, like in my bed. I want to go, down the mountain, with her, in her sled, there where you feel free.

— Come here, I’ll lend you mushy cushions. You’ll feel the comfort with me.

— These ascended in fattening the prolonged candle-flames, flung their smoke into the Laquearia, stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

— I still prefer this painting of Mama Mona. The setting of the stage. The candles burning. The tygers, tygers, running wild, in the forest of the child. Laquearia, unguent, smoke, in rich profusion.

— I am burning, it’s too hot. Crack another window.

— I fell deep into sleep. The comfort burning bright in the forest of the night.

— Where am I?

— Here, in Mona’s house. You’re just drunk.

— Be drunk, be always drunk. And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or on the dreary solitude of our room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks.

— I ate too much. The turkey wings are starting to flutter inside my belly. I’m stuffed. I can’t budge from this chair. I’m falling asleep.

— My head is spinning. In a rollercoaster. Down and up the Russian mountain, there, in the amusement park, where you feel free.

— Mona, Mona, hold on tight. And down we went, again, against the mountains and the cushions, against the death, there.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

There, in the mountains.

— There, again, the record’s scratched.

— There, again, in the mountains.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

— What does it mean?

— Where you feel freeeee.

— I didn’t know she spoke German.

— She butchers it.

— She knows more than you.

— How can you say Paco Pepe doesn’t know German if he is a philosopher? He did his doctoral dissertation on Nietzsche.

— How’s his accent?

— Undetectable.

— Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

— What does that mean?

— I already told you: there, where you feel free. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee.

— Did you see a lot of things?

— Yes, thank you very much, many bright things whirling, wild and open in a rollercoaster.

— With a shower of rain, we stopped in the colonnade.

— I never liked Eliot. So unsensual, unappealing, repressed. I mean, being in the closet is all right, if you come out, someday. But he never came out. And then he wrote:

Burning burning burning burning

O Lord Thou pluckest me out

O Lord Thou pluckest

Burning

He really was burned — repressed — and that’s why he says: O Lord, Thou pluckest me out.

— What does pluckest mean?

— O Lord, why are you plucking me? He plucked religion because the Lord plucked him. His sexual desire was so repressed that the Lord plucked all of his plumes. Plucking a poet’s plumes is like plucking a vampire’s fangs. Or a witch’s broomstick.

— I would have never written:

— Do I dare to eat a peach? Shall I part my hair in the middle?

I would have eaten the peach. I have eaten plenty. And why is it so difficult to part your hair in the middle? Nervous nellie, scaredy-cat, pussy cat.

— O Lord thou pluckest meeoowt.

— Meowt. O Lord thou pluckest meeoowt. O Lord, you’re plucking me out of the closet.

— She doesn’t understand anything. She’s like my aunt. I asked her what “son of a bitch” meant.

— Son of a beach, she explained, are Americans whores who come to Puerto Rico and have sex on the beach, and their bastards are called son of a beach.

— Now, I really understand. I’m really plucking the meanings like daisy petals.

he loves me, he loves me not

he loves me, he loves me

— O Lord Thou pluckest me out.

Burning burning burning burning

— I figured it all out. I seduced Jabalí with this poem. With it, I’m now going to conquer the world. You see, want some more? Well, help yourself. How many orgasms does it take to make you happy? What they usually do is excite your desire and your longings. If I had it once, I want to have it a thousandfold. More, more, more — you have to give more, more infinitely more, more to a thousand platitudes, nothing is there where more is, except your desire to give more, or a greedy, greedy feeling, that can never stop, once it emerges, a little bit, a tiny-weenie little bit, it starts complaining and whining, it becomes unbearable, you don’t know what you want, but you certainly know you want more, more, more. I know what I want. I want more, more, more.

— A quarter to the left, first panel, a quarter to the left, 2nd panel, a quarter to the left, 3rd panel, a quarter to the left 4th panel. And then, all of them at the same time, a quarter to the right. And there you have it: musical fugue.

Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu

Mein irisch Kind,

Wo weilest du?

— You speak German too? I’m impressed.

— Nah, I memorized it. The first time I heard it, it felt like a tempest, and I walked naked through the midst of the storm. This poem will be part of my life. I closed my eyes and memorized it, recovering my desires and long lost past.

Wandering solitudes resting on my breast

Dolls posing on my palms

Dancing are the dead,

Singing beautiful psalms.

The dead, those friends of mine who wrote on yellow pages. Meaningful words that make you understand the magic words:

Abracadabra. Open sesame.

Keep your mouth shut if you don’t know what you’re talking about. And don’t cross the street if the light is red. But how can I remain silent saying what I feel even though the feeling I give may be different to what I wish it had and to what people say it has. I keep telling myself: I’m not mad. I’m lucid. To hell with the truth. A fit of despair could drive a person to shoot himself. Or fall into Jabalí’s traps.

— Here, said he, is your card.

— Did you take it?

— Of course I did. Look. He fooled me. I believed that those were pearls that were his eyes. I had a terrible cold. Now I cough like I have done all the way up to here. The cough I hear when I cough is a thunderbolt. A snowball. And the phlegm. It clears my throat to cough.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant,

had a bad cold.

So you can imagine how her voice sounded.

Nevertheless

is known to be the wisest woman in Europe

with a wicked pack of cards.

She’s a witch, don’t you see, she could be one of the witches in Macbeth.

Double Double Cauldron Trouble

Trouble is bubbling. Watch out. The witches of Oz, and Jabalí is roaring his throat, ahem:

With a wicked pack of cards.

— So, why did you succumb to the cough, or to the wicked deck of cards, when they were shuffled, you should have known, what they meant, when she said:

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

That’s you, my darling. She was beckoning you.

— Don’t point at me.

— It was fire that she wanted.

— And fire she got.

— Fire, Mona, fire.

— Doubled the flames of seven branched candelabra.

— And I was demented. The wicked pack of cards continued shuffling.

Here, is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel.

That drove me nuts. To hear that the wheel was roaring its klaxons. Blowing its horn. Oh, my God, what do I do now? How can I survive this devastation of my whole being? Where am I going to be tomorrow? How can I prove my point if I have no point? Not that I had a point before. But at least, you know what I mean, I knew where I was going. How much longer will I have to suffer the consequences? What you did to so-and-so still resonates in my contradiction. Maybe I’m just some critter feeding off a vegetable like you, but you didn’t contradict me when I said it — you didn’t object with your own contradiction — my reply flew by our daily bread without a single objection until it stopped here, where they objected with all sorts of ifs and buts — but your contradiction resounded like a bullhorn in a diaphragm of sounds — in your reply was all the bicker and bite that’s been hounding me ever since. I don’t want to know anything about you. But by not wanting to know anything about you, I’m denying myself a part of me that is yours, yours alone, and that’s buried in the depths of my ignorance. I’m leaving. How can I leave my melancholy behind? You say nurture what grows outward and bury what grows inward. And what’s already buried — I ask myself — is it dead or just buried because I don’t want to see it — I throw dirt on it so it will die once and for all — but it keeps throbbing like a heart in love and beating sublime notes and even though it’s buried because I didn’t want it to show, it grumbled, groaned, pushed up a mountain and erupted with all the might and glory of a volcano. I’ve tried to kill you by burying you alive, and for a while there I stopped thinking about you because I thought you were dead. You had left me in complete darkness, with no trace of those white lights circling the halo or the crown of laurels on my head — no traces of them or those names that used to possess me. Then idle fame came, which always comes when adjectives feel emptiest, and without a sound it pointed out my name. And then you came back with a nobler name to sit on my name and to name me with other names and addresses. I want you to know I never left you. I always saved a place for your name in case you ever wanted to possess me again, and I’m sure that after possessing them the way you possessed me, you were thinking of possessing me again the way you possessed them because having possessed them after having left me, you would possess them with my emptiness, and then me, with all their winds and memories. And now that you settle me, possess me, point me out with five fingers, and kiss me with five mouths like fish, you won’t leave me, not even for a second, and I don’t mind having you around because I like to take what you say and write it my own way, interpreting it in the style and shape you give it. Oh, let’s stop idealizing and romanticizing. It would’ve been nice to know where you were, and how you got in, and whether it was me who threw you out of the house, of course it was me because I was sick ’n tired of being misunderstood, of being told I might as well be speaking Chinese when I write. I wanted to make sense. I wanted to feel the common denominator. You never really left me. You acted as if you were gone and made me feel your absence. Oh boy, did I feel abandoned. Some people think you’re too subjective — and that’s why they bury you alive — to see if you’ll die of grief and leave. And some even say you’re bad luck. But to me, you’re the greatest woman alive, the most beautiful man of all, you’re my poetry. You wake me up when I have to get up and put me to bed when I have to sleep. But you don’t give me what I want. You always give me something, but I can’t say what you give me because you don’t give me what I want. I don’t want what I want. I want what I want. I don’t know how to ask for what I want. I know I’m missing something — something is missing. I know there is a rocket packed like a pill — and no one is going to make me swallow that pill — it goes down the hatch like a rocket through space — I know where it’s supposed to go, but it’s lost in outer space — it lost its way without a trace, round and round the dial goes, where it’ll stop nobody knows, blasting past the speed of light, blasting sticks of dynamite, blasting away all the lies, burning them to crispy little fries in an itty-bitty vat of big fat lies — liar, liar, pants on fire — all your plots have gone haywire — all your schemes have backfired — tumbling into the quagmire of a bottomless pit, without a backbone, sounds of the hounds of the tongue, and the lochs of the tongue, empty, full, rife with life — so to speak — with a couple of kisses on the forehead and one on the cheek, which makes three altogether leading to four, a kiss on the behind, the cheek backdoor, where a blast of cold water up the ass knocks a couple of men flat on their ass, flat, but not dead because they live for the blast of ten shots of sherry down the hatch, galloping faster and faster with Rocinante and Clarín, the court jester and the king of laughter, at last, I say nothing against the here-ever-after — I want to laugh until I cry and my tears run dry because my tears are the same whether I laugh or cry, but my words are different every time I fall on my ass and write from behind, frontward or backward, left or right, all that matters is how you did it and whether it did it right and whether it ever reached the tip-top or the rock bottom, assuming that there was rock at the bottom, maybe there was nothing at the bottom, maybe all the bottoms were falling for nothing because there was nothing to fall for — they were free-falling over nothing and they were to free to fall freely into this free-for-all — all for nothing — and some of them thought they’d eventually get to the bottom of it if they keep plunging deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit where there was nothing to fall on except their asses and their faces — they’re up to their asses and faces in bottomless pits and they’re squealing with laughter as they come tumbling down like cartoons from the stars and they’re laughing at those twinkle, twinkle, little stars, flickering like swarms of fireflies, like little diamonds in the sky and they’re magically turning shitgreen like hotshit, I swear I was falling on my ass in this bottomless pit of jinglebells and dingle-berries when suddenly I flipped back over, or onto my right side, it doesn’t really matter which side because the right is to the left of the right where the left is writing what the right was just saying because both sides are falling on their asses at the same time because they’re both writing with the same tongue, left or right, against the grain of Christianity, backwards, I swear I was falling on my ass, when suddenly I pulled a tongue out of my ass, as if my ass had a tongue to thrust in and out, thrusting in and out where my ass kept falling on its ass, it kept thrusting in and out, in and out, forwards and backwards, faster and faster — first one there wins the race — last one there’s a rotten egg!

III. Black-Out

Stray Dog

I am walking in my boots, plodding and trodding along, and the faster I go the more perspective I lose because I never look back to see what I have left behind. I say I am southbound — and that is where I am bound to find my destiny — southbound. But a sudden impulse drives me back around the apple of the north, westbound where I am bound to be spellbound — gazing at the infinite point of the water’s horizon — entranced by a mannequin and the shoes it is wearing — wishing I were that mannequin — watching the wind blow the newspapers away — watching a mouse run into a sewer. And passing by a rat and watching a thief pass me even faster, cursing at a madman, but everybody passes on their way to no return — or knows that even when crossing the same river twice, the waters will be different each time — but water will be water no matter what it wants to be — or how it wants to go with the flow, swim, dive, die — cease to be what it was yesterday — cease to feel yesterday sailing across its back, sticking a knife in today’s back, yesterday’s beings asked us: why? As if why would tell us why we are not what we were yesterday. I have circled this apple plenty of times — and still nobody knows who I am. Going in circles around the same apple sometimes makes me yawn because I’ve discovered

nothing new, nothi g that makes me think. But I can’t blame Adam’s apple, which always makes me think — I blame myself — it’s my own fault — for not renewing in my heart of hearts the winding ways where the waters of my youth flowed away. Lazy, fickle, and rash — eager, tired, and brash — spiteful, truthful, and resentful — or thoughtful like an autumn tree that turns green in the middle of spring — sprouting clichés that sound like words I’ve mixed with red wine where the vines of my desires grow thick — and the grapes inspire me to think again, and I look in one of the mirrors and see someone else looking back at me. But who am I if I don’t recognize myself in either face — maybe they’ll recognize me after I’m gone because I can’t stand standing still for a single moment that dares to try to hang me on a wall like a self-portrait — I can’t bear being myself, the person I just was, the one I no longer am, the one who left with the moment that no longer is, and I ran and ran because I didn’t want to be trapped inside myself because I didn’t feel right running inside a body that wasn’t my body, what body, maybe I’ll start a fire and burn all my things and memories that have trapped me inside a body that isn’t me anymore — because I was never really inside it when I was running away from myself not to find myself again — not because I hated myself, but who am I to love myself so much that I would want to stay inside myself for so long — why wouldn’t I want to blast past the earth’s orbit like an astronaut — or the dead — who leave us behind and never come to visit because they want to leave the earth, like you, like me, like all immortals who thirst and hunger for such sudden death that never ceases to burn or fly or soar — I can keep talking because the water keeps flowing and I keep walking and if I don’t stop talking I’ll keep talking like I’m walking and blaming myself: why me — why now — and why not yesterday. Why me, why now — and why not when I wanted to be me — and didn’t find myself wanting to be me — and for not finding me inside myself I blamed myself and wondered: why me? And why now — and not before — it is me — and it is only now that I can blame and beat myself up for the crime of a missing identity that I never committed — and now that it’s beating in my chest with its own sense of guilt, blaming me and forgiving me for never feeling guilty about anything except the oppression that oppresses me, and it’s not my fault for being oppressed by my own guilt that forces me into a corner, with my back against the wall, against the masses, pointing at me with furrowed brows, calling me the oddball, the exception to the rule of blaming blame — for not having done what I was supposed to do when I was supposed to do it — for having done it after time ran out of time — and time passed by. I passed by — I come and go the way I went — the same way as before and after — where I will never find myself behind bars — looking out — what a nice feeling to be outside passing this same place twice, but now that I see it again, I can’t tell whether I’ve been here before or whether I’m dreaming again — I don’t remember being here, and that is why I came back, to see if I would recognize it, memorize it, or forget it, dreaming of the memories of being there or simply being, forgetting what I was passing I was less and now I am what I was and that is enough — I already forgot who I am and become the forgetfulness that forgets that it already forgot who I was. I am what I am without being who I was without being sincerely sincere — I heal my thoughts — kiss the wound and make it feel better — and you have to get up in the morning before you can go back to bed again. No matter how

late I come home and go to bed the thoughts keep me up at night, swarming and buzzing around my head, even when I count to a hundred thousand and shut my eyes as tight as I can, I still hear them thinking — rise ’n shine, sleepy head, it’s time to get out of bed — and as long as they’re still thinking, I’m still breathing but nothing in life or death is worse than being tormented by your own thoughts day and night, nonstop, around-the-clock — I tell some of them — can’t you wait until morning? Now’s not a good time. An idea sticks in my mind, but I can’t think it through right now — so it hangs there, thinking, suspended in midair while others try to push and shove it out of the way, it hangs there livid — timid, it’s the best one so far — my first choice — even though it’s hanging over my dreams, keeping me awake and disturbing all the other ideas that won’t let me sleep either — first thing in the morning I’ll have to write them down. As if thoughts were as self-absorbed as assumptions or presumptions, presuming categorically false and phallic assumptions and supposing or presupposing supposed suppositions assuming nothing about anything and presupposing preposterous presumptions, forcing themselves on valid ones that bow to the boss obediently — because he is the boss — that’s why — because he bosses them around mindlessly because if he stopped to think he would shrink from the sheer force of his impotence — the boss of force, not the whim, ah, if only the whim were more forceful when it comes spiraling down on top of them so precipitately, oh good Lord, you sound like Neruda with so many categorically presumptive adverbs that leave the mind on a precipice precipitating precipitately, you don’t need so many ly’s to precipitate if you go straight to the point without beating around the bush and spread your wings and fly, you fly like a straight arrow and hit the thought, bull’s-eye, and you’re brilliant, sparkling like a flawless diamond (sorry, but I love little flaws), you don’t know what I’m talking about, but that doesn’t stop you from contradicting me, to make me lose my train of thought, if I’m not as hardy as a party that parties hardy until the bad mood fades because it runs out of breath and withdraws its claws, the claws of its paws, the bedrock of its foundation, there, between a rock and a hard place, it catches a catnap but it’s not a cat napping, it’s a dog panting and it steps into the cat-trap with all four paws. The truth has no sub-clauses or subterfuge, crutches or canes — it’s not arthritic or grouchy — it howls at the infinite like a dog and expects miracles to rain from the sky — it won’t drown in a glass of water, fall for sugar pills, or hobble around on a cast and crutches. I’ve often preached in my sermons (not to sing my own praises or eat pistachios like a caged canary swinging on a perch) — I’m already gone, but I keep going — away from all sorts of cages — I seized the chance to walk out that door as if it were my own house and never look back. No, I won’t say no to subjunctive clauses or to double brackets that close when they’re supposed to, or to single brackets that stay open, searching in vain for the cat’s four paws of the subjunctive clause in the wolf’s jaws where they’ll never see the light of day, and I won’t say no to the heart of darkness or to the dark of day, and I won’t say no to either side that thinks it speaks the infinite truth because neither one crosses the dividing line or because two parallel lines never meet their grief. I have to retrace my steps — here and there — to find something I lost — places I feel good — because I can’t feel myself anywhere — only in brief stages where nothing feels good — and it’s not that I feel bad — it’s that the wanderer

in me only feels good in continual motion — crossing frontiers without settling frontiers — in hotels — where strangers meet without ever meeting — I feel good when I’m lost — that’s the truth — when I’m really lost, I don’t feel lost — I feel the dynamics of my movement or the method of my youth — I don’t cross words with anyone — people disrupt the creative process — sniffing and poking around — coming and going — and leaving — when a passing intuition roams around uncertain — leaving danger and mountains and houses and fountains and restaurants behind — leaving everything behind — and when I leave, I’ll leave you all behind, the way day leaves night when it turns dark, the way night leaves day when it turns light, when a lantern glows in the middle of the night — with the light of my owl eyes — and it’s not that there aren’t any truths or things to believe in, or that I haven’t been chained down myself, it’s just that my being walks around life — like a night watchman — I don’t know what I have to say, I make a mistake, scribble it out, and say it another way — and I still haven’t said what I have to say because I still haven’t voiced the rush I feel when I’m walking — the lack of permanence and instability — the rush to cut the ribbon and rip open the present — not that it’s important or urgent — what’s important is that I continue to leave behind what happens, what has to happen, what should have happened by now, and it lightened the load of my suitcases, the spiritual baggage of my being that sends its being onward with trumpets heralding the season of Advent and the Annunciation, the Coming, and I’ll be right up front when the Coming comes because I went looking for it on my own two legs, and I said goodbye to all the setbacks — how strange, I rose to a higher state of being without elevators, carriers, transitions, or transports — I got

there on my own two feet, with my own two eyes, with my own sixth sense, but I can still feel a knot inside me and that’s why I’m still here writing this — I’ve got to untie it and keep moving — away — from what I’ve stopped loving — what was never mine — when I leave everyone behind with no regrets about leaving them behind — they stayed behind for one reason or another — they must have been taking care of something — some sort of problem that someone left for them to solve — for someone else — not for themselves — for the Coming — because I wouldn’t stay behind even for my own sake because I wouldn’t feel sorry for myself if I were left behind. I flee from roots like a vampire from the cross — and I flee from all sacrificial crosses and from the saying that one nail drives another nail — why not un-nail every nail and Christian Christ from the sacrificial cross, save them from all their sacrifices and say: quit your job, leave home, and walk away from any kind of name that nails you to a sacrifice in the name of the family. That’s why I’ve long been on my way to a far-away place where all that matters is that I’m leaving the place I was born and raised, never to return to the place I first saw lil’ ol’ me in the mirror — and I’m sailing away from what I’m saying in a boat with four paws, paddling to a place that nobody knows, as long as we’re going somewhere and we’ve lost sight of what we left behind — we gave so much importance to what we left behind, and look how small everything looks now that we’ve left it all behind — it keeps getting smaller like when we were children on the verge of adolescence — it was a stormy course and we boarded with suitcases for other ports — as long as there are no frontiers — as long as we don’t know where we’re going — as long as we’re going far, far away — there’s nothing too important to leave

behind on this journey — goodbye to unimaginable frontiers — where the frontier is the only image imaginable because there is nothing suspicious lurking beyond the frontier — so what if there are walls, forts, or bunkers, men of all shapes and sizes, or even vines tying us to the earth — I always look beyond the sea’s horizon, where I want to be, where no one has ever been, the other side of the rainbow, beyond my wildest dreams, dreaming, walking, doing what must be done — and what happens to the man who flies to the sun and goes down in flames or meets the messenger of his destiny, an angel with big wings who carries him like a stork back to the place he was born, grows, and dies, or achieves something during his travels — enduring the journey — with many more rivers, bridges, and chimeras yet to cross — I stop to think about where I came from and which way my thoughts are heading — I’m heading south to the Statue of Liberty to torch my being in the continuous presence that I am and to find my being at peace with my being inside itself, finding myself and being without being or not being everything I am doing today being what I am doing without being a being I am not seeing in my being because it’s not inside me anymore — it left my being — it said goodbye so many times — flying swiftly away on feathered disillusions — as if chased away by guilt — for being without me — if I say I’m in a hurry without it, I mean a hurry-scurry, like here’s your hat where’s your hurry — I’m getting out of here, and I’m leaving because I haven’t finished going once and for all because something or someone comes back searching for a part of my being when I’m about to cross the frontier — I left the keys at home — so what — I’m not planning to come home — you left one of your suitcases — you shouted — so what — if I left it behind it’s because I don’t want to be a card-carrying member of a suitcase committee that never quite leaves the way suitcases do, without hurrying to get lost in customs, without losing face for losing its way, naked impudence of the being that leaves everything without finding anything. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Canned Sardines

If it’s 5 o’clock on Friday — and you’ve had no work to do — and your boss gives you work at 5 o’clock — let him do it, close your desk, turn off your computer — and walk right out. If it oppresses you, ask yourself what oppression means. Isn’t your own destiny oppressing you? Aren’t you aching to accomplish something for yourself? Where are those orders coming from anyway — from your responsibilities to the boss — or from a higher destiny calling you to make something of life? Haven’t you ever felt a calling — in your guts — assuming you have guts — or your lungs — or the twinkle in your eyes — a calling from a higher someone or something more powerful than yourself, telling you to follow it? If not — then what do you have — I ask you — a boss biting and picking on you — day in, day out — take it or leave it. If you let mediocrity oppress you — because you know it’s mediocre and you do nothing against it — you’re doubly oppressed by mediocrity and the boss — and twice as mediocre. And don’t tell me: What am I going to live off — off what? The question is not what are you going to live off — but whether you dare to live. I stay clear of all bosses, and I don’t oppress anybody. People say either you’re above or you’re below, but no, that’s not true, I’m neither above nor below, I’m passing by like the clouds in the sky, the way the sun passes, basking the earth in light every day. If you don’t pass by, if you don’t accept that you’re here passing by, if your being is not, not passing by everything as it moves around, I am here later. Present. When they stifle you, they let you rust, in every way, even if you’re not rusty, you rust, your teeth fall out, your hair falls out, your moment comes, some run, others get to the point, some humor you, others take precautions, others live in terror because the pressure is so great. It’s so easy to say — I am not going to do it — if you’re unemployed — everything unemployed untangles the tangle that doesn’t let you untangle yourself. If they bring you down, put you down, keep you down in a can of sardines — my question is the following — why did you let them pack you into a can of sardines — if you are not a sardine — and your boss and the other sardines who are sardines don’t realize that you are not a sardine? You’ve been so conditioned to act like a sardine — you think your canned existence is your sole existence — and you can’t tell yourself apart from the other sardines that oppress you because you’re all stuck together in one big clump — to save space — canned space — like canned time on the job — whoever works the hardest the fastest earns the most — whoever puts himself under the greatest pressure has the greatest talent to be put down — the more they put you down, the more you let them — and so the tension builds among the canned sardine rats that itch and bite from ugliness, salty and cold, more dead than alive. If you let them pack you into a sardine can, it’s because you are a sardine — just like all the rest — made of salt and oil, scales and tails, slimy and thick. Canned dead fish bring bad luck. They give bad vibes and give you hives. Canned sardines are all the same. They’re just like flies, but at least flies have wings and fly. That’s the problem with you sardines — you let yourselves be canned. You don’t have wings, and you don’t fly or sting. You don’t buzz or bite your boss. You just squirm and pick on your own rot and death. And the root of the problem is that you don’t fly, you don’t walk, you don’t pass by like I pass by — I pass by everything — from an inferior state of squirming like a canned sardine to a superior state of spreading my wings of steel and flying. Why did you leave your life of Bacchus? Why did you change your crown of laurels for a crown of thorns, china for plastic, wings for cans, joy for sadness, life for death? Go ahead and turn, millennium, turn and leave pain behind.

Epilogue

At the intersection where two roads meet, I then saw two friends meet, Hamlet and Zarathustra, each lugging a dead body.

Zarathustra:

What brings you here? With a dead body.

Hamlet:

What about you? You’ve got one too.

Zarathustra:

The dead must be buried.

Giannina:

I’m lugging a dead body too.

Hamlet:

Who invited you to this burial?

Giannina:

I’m going to bury the 20th Century.

Zarathustra:

I, the tightrope walker.

Hamlet:

It’s about time you buried the Overman.

Zarathustra:

And you, your circumstance.

Hamlet:

I am me.

Zarathustra:

Your circumstances killed you. This deadweight is killing me. It’s a reminiscence I feel. Déjà vu. Yes, it’s Christ carrying the hellish cross of sacrifice.

Giannina:

That cross that Christ carried. It’s the same dead body you’re both carrying three or four times over. It’s the end of the 20th century, and I’m carrying this dead body. I turned my back on the 20th, and now I want to see the eyes of the 21st. And although I won’t live through it all — maybe like Moses — I’ll see it with my eyes although I won’t live through it all. I’ll live through just the beginning. And I predict great omens. Good luck, dwarf. Dwarves bring good luck.

Zarathustra:

So where are you going to bury that dead body?

Giannina:

In the mausoleum of liberty whose torch-bearing statute is deader than the dead body on your back.

Hamlet:

Who invited you to this burial?

Giannina:

Liberty which is dead. I’m at peace with myself. With what I have inside. Without caring ‘what will they say’. I don’t care about demons or chimeras. Superficial surfaces roll forth dancing waves, and the fireman in front of me says: Fire! The people’s fire! Raging. Air. Bliss. Here comes the funeral procession. The procession of dynamite.

The Pope:

dead

The furies:

happy

The stirrups:

dangling

The heart:

fulfilled

The butterflies:

fluttering

The Tenerife:

trembling

The ant:

eating

And what happens when the sun is night — when there is no difference because democracy has proclaimed: everything is equal: air, water, earth, sky, mountain, each and every one is equal. We all have equal rights.

Hamlet:

Who invited you to this burial?

Giannina:

God, who is dead!

About the Author

Photo Copyright: Michael Somoroff

Giannina Braschi is one of Puerto Rico’s most influential and versatile writers of poetry, fiction, and essays. She was a tennis champion, a singer, and fashion model before she became a writer. With a PhD in the Spanish Golden Age, she has taught at Rutgers, Colgate, and City University and has written on Cervantes, Garcilaso, Lorca, Machado, Vallejo, and Bécquer. Author of United States of Banana and Empire of Dreams, Braschi’s cutting-edge work has been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts, the NY Foundation for the Arts, El Diario, PEN, the Ford Foundation, the Reed Foundation, Danforth Scholarship, and Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. She writes in three languages — Spanish, Spanglish, and English — to express the enculturation process of millions of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. — and to explore the three political options of Puerto Rico — nation, colony, or state. Braschi dedicates her life’s work to inspiring personal and political liberation.

About the Translator

Photo Copyright: John Stuart

Tess O’Dwyer’s English rendition of the Latino literary classic Empire of Dreams by Giannina Braschi won the Columbia University Translation Center Award and inaugurated the Yale Library of World Literature in Translation. With a master’s degree in literature from Rutgers, she edited Review: Art and Literature of the Americas and translated the nineteenth-century social realist novel Martin Rivas by Chilean author Alberto Blest Gana for Oxford University Press. Tess O’Dwyer’s short story about her late Korean mother, entitled “Ballerina of Chestnut Mountain,” won first place in the National Short Story Competition of the Hackney Literary Awards. She is a board member of PEN American Center, Evergreen Review, and Harvard University’s Cultural Agents Initiative. She runs her own arts management consultancy in New York City.

Content

Giannina Braschi
Yo-Yo Boing!

I. Close-Up

II. Blow-Up

III. Black-Out

Stray Dog

Canned Sardines

Epilogue

About the Author

About the Translator