Jake Goetz


Nueve horas del sol


branches silhouette in sky’s soft grey blue      headlights of yellow and red like coloured pencils tracing the winding winter roads      two men in wind-breakers   pants and sneakers hold the day’s first warm-promise in their pockets     at their feet an imagined futbol is kicked

*

in the east   factories   sand-papered houses and his first real attempt    sponging a red against cloud      an old ute full of coca-cola sits in the outskirts of the town      land spread like vegemite on bread    reaching for the furthest extremity    the child’s mouth      the window fogs    hazing perception as in a Monet      i wipe the window with the curtain      to the west the Andean foothills reveal themselves in cloud leaving only snow-capped tops      soft berets adorning Mendoza’s floating heads

*

he reveals his head sudden   then shoulders   chest      orange adorned    saturated effects enhanced      he enters not knowing why   not caring   while for years we’ve enquired about his daily appointments   discontent with just a succession      his legs   his feet   his entirety now      shades of yellow and green shrubs across dry-flat plain   dilapidated houses without doors   electric wires like veins stretch   and the road      a dividing line he must cross to find the mountains

*

two old men sit against a wall    their rugged packs like face above worn coats and an empty wooden crate      two black dogs assess each other in the street of shops      just passing through    he glares behind a thin blanket of white dissipating to deep blue      then rolling hills of sand      cracked earth      reggaton played on a phone      a woman sits in the shade of an olive tree while two men push a broken down Ford from the road      a phone rings   the same tone as mine back home      and home    it wasn’t a choice   this blonde hair blue eyes    to be born into a resource rich country raised by the concept of western capitalism at the hands of the exploitation and inequality of other places      but i wear this   see this in the eyes of the Argentine man staring   threatened or threatening   or my anxiety rearing up like an altschmerz      the day reverting back to the self      narcissism and pessimism      stopping      ten or so wild horses   brown   white   black   run across the road kicking up dust      he hangs completely ripe above   glares the bottom of mountains   adds shading to the distinctness of their uralt formation

*

river beds dried out by systematic chance      hear ‘to stand among the ones that live in lonely indecision’      then again mountain obsessed    postcard silhouettes as he moves past Chile and into the Pacific    houses and shops appear      in fifteen minutes arriving in La Rioja




Jake Goetz is a poet from Sydney. He is currently working on a book of poems through the ASA’s mentorship program. He also works as a picture framer.
 
 
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