Ghostly Matters
–Buenos Aires, Argentina
Only the war was real for her.
Only his pistol-hard body.
Only its starched green uniform,
pants dropped
to spit-shined boots.
Only his gin-breath,
his grunting
over her pinned-down body.
Only the gasp of his finish,
the hard slap to end it.
**
Only his jacket remains.
Only its epaulets like nooses,
swinging in the ceaseless dream,
swinging for thirty years.
Thirty years,
and now thirty feet from her:
a homeless man begs for change,
his green jacket a remnant
ghosting up from the coup.
Thirty years and this jacket.
Thirty years, and she still tastes him.
Thirty years and only thrusts and more years, the jacket:
the smell of wet wool, his sweaty face,
the blaze of gin,
and the cold concrete floor
beneath her back, unyielding..