Ghost dog, barrel ribs and belly
some worm, some parasite
eating her and you said, tourists
they like to get upset about it

and I nodded because we
understood: this is what's

so great about us: we know
the brutal nature of how it goes          
because every day do you understand
we walk past one corpse or another.

The rooster? He's in a doorway
and thin as the dog. Two weeks
it took him to get from the garden chairs
to there and part pelican; crane says last
she saw him on a gurney and he's gone since
and it was you who told me, the drunks
they take them to the river.

Amaranth and dust-coated barbacoa
I watch her eat and see your teeth
gutter yellow upturned party
some shindig and no one cared
what it would be like after; we never
clean up it's true but still, how
did they get like this? No one knows
and it's not interesting to anyone else.

Last time I saw you carrying
a block of ice, but I leeched             
those thirty seconds already, dry.

__

This is a poem from my "You As" manuscript. There are about sixty "you as" poems, thus far.

Mexican barbacoa is not like a US barbecue firstly in that it's cooked in a big pit. The best barbacoa I've had I think was goat barbacoa somewhere in Sinaloa state.