On the Streets of Quitratue “And I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.” Pablo Neruda She left me by text. What did you expect from Gen X? Oh no she’s Gen Pluto. They called her a planet Then took it back. She never got over that. Call me Gen Y. Just looking for answers Don’t call it stalking. outside her apartment on the streets of Quitratue. Hello, girl carrying a pail, Can you answer my, oh well– Lady selling flowers, can you– But when I approached, they wilted. Lady, flowers, girl and pail Parched dominoes toppling disintegrating into nothing. Pablo Neruda put his hand on my shoulder “These streets are barren. I told ya.” “What do you think of love, Pablito?” But he turned into a puma, clawing the humidity and sniffing the air on the streets of Quitratue. Yehuda Amichai, a dog after love, enters on all fours, the penis of his woman’s new paramour between his teeth, her panties wrapped around his head. “What do you think of love, Yehuda?” I ask. But he just growls at Neruda, each trying to sound nastier than the other. On the streets of Quitratue. Richard Brautigan screams from the alley “Forget love. Let me die in your yellow hair.” Followed by the urgent shriek of a blonde “Get him off of me! Call 911!” Russell Edson says hello with a six-foot eraser. “Ah, what do you think of love, Russ?” Before he can speak, Neruda and Yehuda take strategic leaps with sharpened teeth into area 51, somewhere near the groin. He tries to fend them off with his big pink stick, yelling “Amyloo you can’t hurt me!” Before they all disappear into the crustacean blush of the setting sun high above the streets of Quitratue. James Tate emerges in their place walking a pet goat on a leash. “Ah Mr. Tate, what do you think of love?” He just points to the sunset and mumbles Unnatural, Oh my. Too beautiful. Terrifying. Little fish. Don’t speak. Night falls quickly around here. And on every imagined street. The girl carrying the pail becomes the woman selling flowers in an instant. The goat isn’t impressed. He probably doesn’t care for Mr. Tate. Tate is aware but feeds him anyway. On the streets of Quitratue. It’s just me and and one last IPA dangling from the top of a telephone pole flashbacking to the time she sculpted me into a pedestal of stone, then years later unsculpted her masterwork into pieces bagging and dragging them to the curb. That’s when she’d heard those most belittling words, the dwarfing of Pluto. Maybe I should have controlled myself. But I laughed too hard, too long and now it’s just the pole, the streetlamp and me precariously flickering and faltering between artificial light and pure darkness on the streets of Quitratue. There she comes, my ex- with a policeman. “Hello, what do you think of love?” I slur. “Do you know this man?” he asks. “No. There must’ve been a mistake. I never met this tiny man who thinks I’m his mother and the world revolves around him. Please take him far from me and the streets of Quitratue.”
So many ingredients, Ray, it's a spicy mix!
I love this, Ray! It’s like a Dantean meeting of makers in a half-lit hellscape. Marvelous!