Sophie Segura

Intercontinental Love Song

after the NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day for January 5, 2007: ‘Bodélé Depression Dust
Feeds Amazon’

A millennium riding the easterlies
this ghost-lake slough this diatomaceous lode
as resurrection as endogenous gift

—the sagebrush cricket’s hindwings
bared to love the paper nautilus’s
severed appendage

Darwin sent something of this to Berlin bonemeal of a region’s
denuding desert jizzum plume of admiration
entrusted across a planet

In a satellite image parched gland
of one continent twitches in swansong

And —oh!

Your body pearled Saharan

milonging

In tango you can lie, but you can’t in milonga—because of the tempo.
Hector Falcon

Few scoops and you’re away half-cut
into the night. No want of chongos in this town
philangering. Almagro dancefloor and the squeezebox handler
in a mucksweat’s throwing shapes in your direction
and the gargle has you strumpety. You’ll skip
the vertical expression, take the breeches role and cock
your noggin, watching for the nod.

It’s all fast finger-work, plámásery.
C’MONCHABONCHACHOCHACHONGOTANGOCHANGOSPAS—he pulls
when he should push. Short shrift, boludo!

Bockety on Avenida Corrientes, hail a joer,
guacho gawking at your gams.
Banjaxed. So to the scratcher. That’ll learn you.
Bloody music types! Bandoneónanists, the lot of them.

Notes:
Chongo (Argentinian Spanish): a male with whom one engages in a no-strings-attached physical relationship
Plámásery: from Irish plámás, act of flattering, sweet talk
Boludo (Argentinian Spanish): idiot
Joer: Dublin slang for taxi
Guacho (Argentinian Spanish): bastard, rogue

Sophie Segura is from Dublin and currently lives between Madrid and Buenos Aires. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Tears in the Fence, Magma, The Rumpus, Dedalus Press anthology Romance Options and elsewhere.