this one has quite the story –
some of it ayahuasca-blotched,
it’s true.
Peru, visa a year past expiry
Quechua-speaking boyfriend gunning
for New Zealand citizenship with little success.
we were doing sculpture with
scrap metal in Pisac. then I conceived
and he and his long black hair left me
half alone at the sheer feet of the ruins.
the flight out was from Cusco.
I knew they would look at my papers and
charge me the earth. I didn’t
want to abort – dilettantism
describes what hurt me more, why I cried
so much those hot, high altitude, pre-departure
days. us expat hippies had to be disabused
and how? just by look, feel.
all my clothes stank of kitsch, I wanted to change my clothes
I wanted something homespun, something Peruano
to take away that wasn’t inside me, doomed.
in a dead end tendril of
one of the nauseating market
strips was a store like all the others
except that it had stairs. I went up the stairs
unbidden – it was wet with cat piss
there, the little dim room
full of cats upon scratchy, beautiful cardigans.
play with us
said some sisters in Spanish
playing. cases of vegetable dyes
lay wide open on a table
as if the man who entered through an archway
on bandy legs, the whole of him
not more than five feet long
was about to be a clown.
I lay naked on bluestone in my head –
the watery cold of it drowning
all the bad smells and odd feelings.
I can soil myself with impunity if I want –
really, I remember thinking that.
the man was called Hippolyto
and he had peanut brittle shards in his gums
instead of teeth.
in Spanish, which one would you like?
in Spanish, try first –
for those two words the price would now be less.
footfall when walking around
made a swampy noise. there were yellow puddles
at the base of a few piles I avoided.
the cats, mostly kittens, were sound asleep.
alpaca, Hippolyto assured me
and when, towards the back, I found this one
attracted by its teal and Nazca Lines
a story an Australian had told
at the vegetarian restaurant in Pisac
came to mind – a group of wild boar
hunters were camped on scrubland
somewhere in rural New South Wales. they’d arrived
late, paid their dues
to the property owners, made a ragbag campfire
which they sat around a while
before chaining
their four Bull Arabs to a tree and turning in.
next morning, two were free
and diabolically bloody.
a man showed up.
he was holding a rifle.
those fucking mutts got in and killed four of my best
he screamed – prize-winning
alpacas at the next station over
out to stud, too big to eat
but not to tear to shreds.
you city hunters
you weekend warriors don’t know anything
about how it is. he looked more sad than
angry when he said, ten grand a piece or you’re dead.
a perfect fit.
veinte soles? señora
was his answer, cupped hands
outstretched like an old roadside pauper.
I almost cried for the face he wore
gave him forty I hardly had
did up the buttons – like wheels
on a wooden toy train –
as I walked back down the stairs.
that was ten years ago.
of all my Peruvian keepsakes
it’s lasted me the longest – what
does it matter that I later found out
does it matter that I later found out
it was only low-grade lambswool?
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