Colombia, September 2018
You focus red, wild-eyed yellow sun.
You bare feet on pavement, long black-haired beauty.
You eat music by the spoonful, spit out the bones
of all those who have wronged you.
You flowered bitch, you spray-painted mouth,
bead this life brightly together. Sell it to us
like only you can. You peligroso, stray dog,
garbage street with a good head on your shoulders.
Do you form at the base of the mountain,
has a taxi driven you straight off the edge?
Are you Cartagena on her knees,
Bogotá sprawled out and waiting to begin?
You remember this revenge,
befriend what moves in the night:
A caffeine fiend or cocaine queen,
your veins filled with this
breathless and ever drawn out dream—
Kara Knickerbocker (she/her) is the author of the chapbooks The Shedding Before the Swell (dancing girl press, 2018) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Find her online at www.karaknickerbocker.com and Twitter @karaknick.