Santiago On My Mind
by Lew Rosenbaum
I imagine myself
sipping my scotch
alongside reporters from
the Washington Post and The Guardian

The Santiago, Chile, Hotel Carrera
in the bar in the basement
of the Hotel Carrera
across the street from La Moneda –
I’ve never been to Santiago,
one of the largest of cities
in the Americas,
on a day when Nixon-sent
bombs dropped on the palace,
where Kissinger doomed democracy
and later complained that

Co-conspirators: Nixon & Kissinger
reporters had not given US credit
for its strangling hand in the coup –
sitting on a bar stool
downing my pisco sour*,
would I recognize the door opening
to the deaths of 3,000 —
or was it 30,000?
and the number of tortured?
did the blood from Victor Jara’s
severed hands run in rivers
all the way through Wall Street

Victor Jara, murdered September 16, 1973
or was it the silent sound
of his guitar that drowned out
the cheers from the stock marketers
on September 11, 1973.
Our own 3,000 dead
in New York City
food service workers and
janitors and traders and
secretaries – vaporized and rubbled upon,
embracing miraculous air coffins or
consumed by a collapsing monument
to global wealth and plunder –
how can we take advantage of these
fresh dead
ask the politicos looking for an enemy
around which flag to rally
the disconcerted, to declare, reimagine,
construct, flim-flamify this day as
patriot day
I wonder what a manhattan would taste like
in the bar on top of the World Trade Center
I imagine the dry heaves after the
taste of thousand dollar bills
and how can nine eleven only mean
nueva york,
in a country that styles itself “America”
or even THE united states
as if there were no other nation
that boasts united states
and now denying 1973
coopts tragedy for its unique
butchering self
sitting in a bar across from La Moneda

Palacio La Moneda, Santiago, Chile
sitting in a café in Manhattan
dipping my finger in the memory of blood
growing purple morning glories whose vines
will strangle borders and bombs
*A pisco sour is an alcoholic cocktail of Peruvian origin that is typical of the cuisines from Chile and Peru, considered also a South American classic.[A] The drink’s name comes from pisco, which is its base liquor, and the cocktail term sour, in reference to sour citrus juice and sweetener components. The Peruvian pisco sour uses Peruvian pisco as the base liquor and adds freshly squeezed lime juice, syrup, ice, egg white, and Angostura bitters. The Chilean version is similar, but uses Chilean pisco and pica lime, and excludes the bitters and egg white. Other variants of the cocktail include those created with fruits like pineapple or plants such as coca leaves.
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