Set

A fight in the bar/ a hunting bar and the head a cow dewy with perfume/ two drunkards
skinned to coarse tips by bottles/ one the face of a woman who will not turn and rise/ the
other a black marauder of the wharves who gets up who crawls on half-claws toward the
bathroom/ blood and alcohol and shit and broken glasses and a set of false teeth and a
wallet and a key ring all on the tombstones and along the sidewalks/ someone in the
barely illuminated corner intends to say something but finally shuts up and scratches his
head/ the barman whose silhouette and gestures agree with the nurse cleaning the glasses
who listens carefully to a new request for hard liquor/ to the distant spot much higher
than many and so many noises in the vicinity/ listens to the hysterical sound of a siren/

Juan Carlos Flores, translated by Marta Hernández Salván and Jeffrey Thomson and read by Jeffrey Thomson.
Set is from Thomsan's forthcoming collection Many Ways to Dig a Tunnel, translated from the Spanish of Juan Carlos Flores.