m i c h e l l e g i l - m o n t e r o

from Patagonia

The last word here is that it is better to put an end to a process of creeping disappearance (ours) by means of a

live sojourn into visible disappearance. All translations into action are imaginary solutions. This is why

‘Patagonia’ goes so well with ‘Pataphysics,’ which is the science of imaginary solutions.

—jean baudrillard

If maps grew

new accuracies
with age

Americas cobbled into islands found
                                       on contradictory explorations

                                                    Long sputtering coastline, land ragged with
                                                    lagging scent

Acquiring salt marsh, garden of parchment, brown
homespun blood

Flyaway routes     rooting under wild
stems

What wounds disclose

What liquids don’t combine

Nevertheless erect a firmament

There


	* Giant to an islet of waiting Extreme green Incising a water line across the vision Unshorn shore Blue tongue of the guanaco Where you stand at a man’s waist A place based on this
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MICHELLE GIL-MONTERO is a poet and translator of contemporary Latin American poetry. Her translations include Poetry After the Invention of América: Don't Light the Flower by Chilean poet Andrés Ajens (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), This Blue Novel by Mexican poet Valerie Mejer (Action Books, coming 2013), and Mouth of Hell by Argentine writer María Negroni (Action Books, coming 2013). Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Third Coast, Cincinnati Review, and other journals. A chapbook, Attached Houses, is coming from Brooklyn Arts Press in 2013. She lives in Pittsburgh and is Assistant Professor of English at Saint Vincent College.

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