Tierra del Fuego

You drag at my shirt until

my shoulder becomes a mountain

A panicked, straightjacket impasse

as if that rising, tectonic weight

knelt still on my back

Wrist bent up

in the ugly way

of a dead bird rigour

warmth all leached away

in the approbation of your hands

Against the margin of a blank escarp

that demarcates the courtyard garden

with the jigsaw and sterile neglect

of a masquerade

Visiting hours are from nine to twelve and three to five

no exceptions

beyond this point, staff and trustees only

Faces gridlocked in the glass divide

wire reinforcements starred

with repeated blows

cicatrix and whetstone silent

Counting the stark impossibility

of escape

in the seesaw exhalations

of hard slaughtered cigarettes

And the angular puncture wounds

of a condor flying