THE DIRTY WAR
Buenos Aires, Argentina 1976
Evenings we dance the wooden room
down to splinters, last jar of bathtub wine,
dancing we drink it in San Telmo’s pixalated
throat, all saints alive and stretching themselves
over cab drivers, drunks, and travellers.
We make air for ourselves by exhaling to ash
and birch, the body bows a feint over Plaza de Mayo,
mothers of disappeared boys, soldiers in hollow,
take my arms. The grass feigns milonga. We dance.
Evenings we dance open doors of men
writing plays of lady Eva, stars still bubbling
in hidden tango joints under streets, we dance you,
puppeting and pulling strangers from kiosks
of empanadas, the gentle movement of groins
in resentful sync is enough to make a city weep—
Corpus Christi flocks today in a head of triangular
birds, and now the air is full of wet paper. We dance.
Evenings we drink to you from balconies
littered in utility bills, love gained, danced, drunk,
vomited before mid-morning. We dance cigars
into molting slag, into timepieces for conversation,
into pity: sir driver, you used to be a saint?
We dance for you, for the lights refusing
their green, the mothers refusing communion,
the Plaza refusing new fountains until old boys bloom,
emerging from women’s embroidered scarves.
Bio:
July Westhale is a Fulbright-nominated poet, activist, and journalist. She has been awarded residencies from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Sewanee, Napa Valley, Tin House and Bread Loaf. Her poetry has most recently been published in Adrienne, burntdistrict, Eleven Eleven, WordRiot, 580 Split, Quarterly West, and PRISM International. She is the 2014 Tomales Bay Poetry Fellow. www.julywesthale.com