It is all waterlessness,
weighted, sticky,
suspended in, un-
able to roll down, a bead of water and
peel away, grasped, released.
Whales

have a fascination with human
hands, can sense
a long ancestry,
prehistorically they swim
to our painful momentary
suspended selves,
the clicking of our
keyboards, clicking and clicking
in the room, suspended,
their noses (round—how embarrasing).
it is all waterlessness, un-

able to roll down, release
(webless/space/matter). The girl
before the heavy door,
as she reached became all
loose skin and cartilege,
the shadow of the whale-skeleton
suspended, we
see it intimately, the
clicking of our keyboards, the
reverberation of each
cartilege, each cartilege-web,
each vein-finger
around my heart, (round
—how unoriginal). Sticky,
weighted. I

have a fascination
with my human
hands. They will become all
loose skin and cartilege-web. I
have always been good. I

have always been good at
asking the questions. Is it
the reminder of themselves? Is it
the echo
of something lost?
Is it the need for touch or
am I just human?
The need for completion?
Have you heard the clicking?
The clicking that coral makes
underwater? The clicking of our
keyboards in the suspended
stillness?

like cherubs drowning.

wet cinnamon
on the hair of a girl

who has always feared
the taste of
her own hands.

the teal open
mouth of an omega,
inked between the ribs of her

the distinction between
them a narrow-lit blur of
flesh-

tinged lace caught under
the shellacked nails of her,

the loud crushed pull of
mahogany silks, her

legs bodiless beneath
those unprovoked out-
bursts of breath

barely holding in
their throatfuls of beads,
the tiny pinched dec-
orations in cloth-

currents. but you
would have me focus–still–on
the slow-changing syntaxes

of her hair, shell
of fuchsia bequeathing moon-
tinctures. as if skin

should not unclose its
gates to let re-exit
silks.

as if diction should
suddenly in-
fuse the eye,

then cower back
into nerves like timid
floral cinders.

—Justin Wymer is a staff writer.

There’s a street off that main Avenida Santa Fe, Junín. Walk down a block or so and there will be a sad old galería to the left – windows mostly shuttered, echoes on the marble floor. It doesn’t seem to faze Gonzalo the cobbler. (The English word is outdated, too quaint. Spanish zapatero is better – the shoe-man.) Cross the threshold of the rent-a-space and it is his territory. Oxfords, dress shoes, heels, and boots litter the floor and perch precariously on the shelves around him, witnesses and testaments of his trade. Gonzalo sits crouched on a stool in the center. Skinny, graying, his leathery skin matching the consistency of the loafer in his hands. He keeps one eye on the shoe and the other on the grainy television propped on a side table. Argentina vs. Uruguay, fútbol.

Gonzalo glances at me warily as I walk in, a tall yanqui, not a regular. It doesn’t take him long to understand why I’m here – I’m standing lopsided with the sole of my boot halfway off. I have hobbled and flapped up miles (kilometers?) of cobblestone streets, or it seems like it. I look ridiculous. You’ll need that fixed, he says, leave it with me.

My plane leaves tonight and all my bags are in storage at the bus station, I explain. It’s a crisis situation.

Stay here, then. It’ll be an hour or so.

I take a seat on a stool he pulls out for me, gingerly removing the shoeshine and leather cleaner and bottles that I, a novice, am at a loss to identify. He keeps working on the loafer. Our silence yanks the announcer’s voice out of the background, tinny but confident. Uruguay scores and Gonzalo swears under his breath. Dismissing the game as unworthy of his further attention, he turns away from the screen and toward me.

You’re not from here, are you. It’s a statement not a question, an inevitable response when I try to roll my r’s. No I’m not, Philadelphia. Gonzalo has a cousin in Chicago. Diego Mansilla, do I know him? No? It’s a big country. Still, you never know. He left in the 90s when the government pegged the peso to the dollar. Changed everything. Cheaper to go to Disney World than to visit relatives down south. The world shrank, you could leave, travel anywhere but he stayed there. Because of a woman, of course, an American. They have three yanqui kids now. Have I met them? No, couldn’t after 2001…

Examining the shoe one last time, Gonzalo sets it on the floor and motions to my boot. I pull it off and hand it to him, sole flapping wanly. I don’t blame him for the disparaging look he gives it. Apparently quality Argentine leather ranges in quality, who knew. Gonzalo grabs an unlabeled brownish bottle from his drawer and begins to coat the boots with its suspicious-smelling contents. Don’t worry, he says, noticing me eye the operation. I know what I’m doing.

Anyway, he continues, couldn’t after 2001. The puta madre government left us with nothing. All these stores were sacked – he gestures to the empty galería stalls around him. Mine too, who knows what they wanted with other people’s shoes but it was the time.
I know something about this, Argentina’s most recent crisis. The government froze its citizens’ bank accounts and people were frantic. They started by sacking supermarkets, but eventually it was a free-for-all. Riots ruled the streets, teenagers carted plasma TVs out of electronics stores, giddy in desperation. Five presidents in a week but Argentines bounced back, they always seem to. Maybe it’s why people seem to live in the present so well here – if the government has the power to nullify all your savings, it’s pointless to plan too far ahead.

Gonzalo keeps talking, telling me about recovering from the crisis, putting his shop back together. He hardly ever looks up at me, concentrating on the repair. I’m listening but wonder whether he cares if I am. He doesn’t seem eager to elicit any response from me, although I’d rather just hear his stories. Maybe that’s all he needs.

As he moves on to shining the boot a customer walks in, the first since I’ve been here. She’s an elderly lady, impeccably dressed, each step she takes small and precise. I’ve seen the type in the Buenos Aires streets. I assume she lives in Recoleta, the old-money barrio, where the embassies are. Gonzalo’s shop straddles Recoleta and Abasto, gritty and colorful and working-class, its borders merging uneasily with the former and only arbitrarily defined if defined at all. The woman ignores me, the half-barefoot teenager on the stool irrelevant to her. The loafers are for her, for her husband rather. She picks them up and inspects them carefully. They’ll measure up, Gonzalo isn’t worried. She makes small talk with the zapatero. What about that fútbol game, my husband wants to kill the whole lot of them. Yes, yes, what a nightmare. The team’s in crisis mode without Messi.

Meanwhile Gonzalo is finished with my boot. He hands it back to me and I pull it on. I can make it to the airport in time, I’m sure. He continues to talk with the elderly lady as I hand him fifty pesos. A deal. I pause on my way out, unsure whether to interrupt, give our conversation some sort of closure. Maybe I should but I’ve missed the moment, so I just smile, mouth thank you, and close the door gently as I leave.

Gonzalo glances at me warily as I walk in, a tall yanqui, not a regular. It doesn’t take him long to understand why I’m here – I’m standing lopsided with the sole of my boot halfway off. I have hobbled and flapped up miles (kilometers?) of cobblestone streets, or it seems like it. I look ridiculous. You’ll need that fixed, he says, leave it with me.

My plane leaves tonight and all my bags are in storage at the bus station, I explain. It’s a crisis situation.

Stay here, then. It’ll be an hour or so.

I take a seat on a stool he pulls out for me, gingerly removing the shoeshine and leather cleaner and bottles that I, a novice, am at a loss to identify. He keeps working on the loafer. Our silence yanks the announcer’s voice out of the background, tinny but confident. Uruguay scores and Gonzalo swears under his breath. Dismissing the game as unworthy of his further attention, he turns away from the screen and toward me.

You’re not from here, are you. It’s a statement not a question, an inevitable response if I have to roll my r’s. No I’m not, Philadelphia. Gonzalo has a cousin in Chicago. Diego Mansilla, do I know him? No? It’s a big country. Still, you never know. He left in the 90s when the government pegged the peso to the dollar. Changed everything. Cheaper to go to Disney World than to visit relatives down south. The world shrank, you could leave, travel anywhere but he stayed there. Because of a woman, of course, an American. They have three yanqui kids now. Have I met them? No, couldn’t after 2001…

Examining the shoe one last time, Gonzalo sets it on the floor and motions to my boot. I pull it off and hand it to him, sole flapping wanly. I don’t blame him for the disparaging look he gives it. Apparently quality Argentine leather ranges in quality, who knew. Gonzalo grabs an unlabeled brownish bottle from his drawer and begins to coat the boots with its suspicious-smelling contents. Don’t worry, he says, noticing me eye the operation. I know what I’m doing.

Anyway, he continues, couldn’t after 2001. The puta madre government left us with nothing. All these stores were sacked – he gestures to the empty galería stalls around him. Mine too, who knows what they wanted with other people’s shoes but it was the time.

I know something about this, Argentina’s most recent crisis. The government froze its citizens’ bank accounts and people were frantic. They started by sacking supermarkets, but eventually it was a free-for-all. Riots ruled the streets, teenagers carted plasma TVs out of electronics stores, giddy in desperation. Five presidents in a week but Argentines bounced back, they always seem to. Maybe it’s why people seem to live in the present so well here – if the government has the power to nullify all your savings, it’s pointless to plan too far ahead.

Gonzalo keeps talking, telling me about recovering from the crisis, putting his shop back together. He hardly ever looks up at me, concentrating on the repair. I’m listening but wonder whether he cares if I am. He doesn’t seem eager to elicit any response from me, although I’d rather just hear his stories. Maybe that’s all he needs.

As he moves on to shining the boot a customer walks in, the first since I’ve been here. She’s an elderly lady, impeccably dressed, each step she takes small and precise. I’ve seen the type in the Buenos Aires streets. I assume she lives in Recoleta, the old-money barrio, where the embassies are. Gonzalo’s shop straddles Recoleta and Abasto, gritty and colorful and working-class, its borders merging uneasily with the former and only arbitrarily defined if defined at all. The woman ignores me, the half-barefoot teenager on the stool irrelevant to her. The loafers are for her, for her husband rather. She picks them up and inspects them carefully. They’ll measure up, Gonzalo isn’t worried. She makes small talk with the zapatero. What about that fútbol game, my husband wants to kill the whole lot of them. Yes, yes, what a nightmare. The team’s in crisis mode without Messi.

Meanwhile Gonzalo is finished with my boot. He hands it back to me and I pull it on. I can make it to the airport in time, I’m sure. He continues to talk with the elderly lady as I hand him fifty pesos. A deal. I pause on my way out, unsure whether to interrupt, give our conversation some sort of closure. Maybe I should but I’ve missed the moment, so I just smile, mouth thank you, and close the door gently as I leave.

That kid, oh man, never appreciated me. He’s so ungrateful after I taught him everything he knows. He acts like he climbed up all by himself. I didn’t coach the guy to think he was better than me, that’s for sure.

I knew that the kid was a fighter since the time I saw him slap away the swimming noodles I would shove in his face while he slept. He got lucky that I chose him. I was the best coach money could buy, and how much did I charge him? Nothing! Granted I stole out of his piggy bank every other weekend, but I spent half of that on cocktail parties I invited him to.

He hung me out to dry, but I’ll gladly say he’s the best fighter I ever met. Maybe I did bring him along too fast, but he got the hang of it eventually. “Remember, Ari, don’t tell anyone you’re twelve or they’ll disqualify us.” The kid had what every coach dreams about: a killer instinct and facial hair that grew very early on in puberty.

“Ari, keep your gloves up!”
“Stop punching me! Why are you at recess?”

Every kid in junior high needs some time to go out and make friends without having his coach whispering pump-up music in his ear, and after that episode I respected the kid’s space. I only talked to him in the classes where he sat by the window.

He was one of those fighters who’s shy out of the ring, but you should have seen him that week when I paid a girl at his school to be his girlfriend. Of course, after that week was over, she left him. When I told Ari, he wouldn’t stop talking about how she was going to tell everyone that I paid her and that now he’d never have a girlfriend. But you know how it is with Ari; it’s always my fault.

You try and try and look what happens. All those times I paid for him to come to the strip club when he was in junior high, and now the kid is twenty-three and won’t even speak to me. Every time I send him corn from the field I used to make him plow he just shakes me off. Every time I find out what his new phone number is, he acts like he doesn’t even know me:

“Kid! When you were in your prime, you coulda taken the title twenty times over. If you just woulda stuck with me!”
“NO! I went to college and now I design book covers. Stop calling. Stop sending grip tape. Stop trying to win me over with hookers. It’s over.”

Maybe I wasn’t the best father. Fine. But my real children didn’t need me that much anyway. One’s a social worker and one’s doing something that doesn’t involve any athletic talent. Point is, Ari was like a son to me. The son I always had but better.