Cordoba, Argentina
If we woke to water rot,
fallen oak crossbeam
bisecting the breakfast table,
a nest of ants shattered
like a chandelier on tile,
I could hardly fault the architect.
They eat insulation, hollow
out the roof, bring water
and mountain cold with them. Each day
this month passes between
a condor’s beak, strings
hours with a sewing needle.
The shopkeeper sells beef milanesa
by the yard, our neighbor’s bee
son pisses in his lover’s bed
and for the third time
blames the dog. Tio Carlos
keeps saying, “honesty
is a jail cell, crooks the wardens,”
as election ads preen television screens
with images of grandmothers,
rolling Pampa. We feel ants
crawl among the hairs
on our ankles as he smokes
two cigarettes in two minutes,
kisses me on the cheek
as if I were a toddler. We mark
the calendar for every day
the ants come back, tick today’s box,
boil a pot of water
to pour between the rafters,
knowing full well
of the damage the solution demands—
how it smokes in spring
like false fire on the tin.
We each grip a pot
with oven mitts. He climbs the ladder,
“crooks the wardens,”
under his breath. Boiling
water rolls over the eaves
like sheet glass. A thin line scorches
a perimeter surrounding the house,
as if slowly cutting us out
of the country like a torn elbow patch,
dead ants in lines.
"Election Day" by Lucian Mattison is the winner of Puerto del Sol's 2016 Poetry Contest
Argentinean-US poet and translator, Lucian Mattison, is the author of two books of poetry, Reaper's Milonga (YesYes Books, forthcoming) and Peregrine Nation (Dynamo Verlag, 2017). His poetry, short fiction, and translations appear in numerous journals including Hayden's Ferry Review, Hobart, Muzzle, Nano Fiction, The Nashville Review, The Offing, and Waxwing. He currently works at The George Washington University in Washington, DC, and edits poetry for Big Lucks. Visit Lucianmattison.com
Image courtesy of Neil Moralee