Medellín
There is no metaphor for the remains
of a bombed car in a basket
nor for the Shepard lying beside them
a roach writhing between his paws
nor for Rocío kicking him
a cigarette between her teeth
telling me to make myself at home
On Goalkeeping
It was Fall when I wrote a terrible story
about a goalkeeper and his family.
Hache pulled me aside
and told me I could become president.
In English, Goalkeeper means little
more than the position one occupies in a sport,
the one responsible for preventing
the ball from crossing one’s line.
In Spanish, goalkeeping has four names.
Portero translates roughly to guard,
the one who decides who enters.
San Pedro is only used
if the goalkeeper is good.
Arquero means archer.
Medieval soldier, vigilant and armed.
Canserbero is the hound of Hades.
Depending on the poet, the hound
has three to a hundred heads
and snakes that emerge from its fur.
The hound secures the gates of the Underworld
to prevent the dead from leaving the dead.
In Spring, Galeano died of lung cancer.
He died in the city where he’d been born,
in the continent from which he’d been exiled.
Hache’s mother was also dying.
His tenure wasn’t granted
and the novel he’d written
about a Cuban history teacher
giving his final lesson
while his mother neared death
seemed to be coming true.
Hache went to his mother.
He left me with his dog,
Diego Rivera, and Open Veins.
It was Summer when my father noticed
my copy of Open Veins.
He gave me Sun and Shadow.
Galeano dedicated a chapter to Camus.
As a boy in Algiers, he’d played goalkeeper
so as not to wear out his shoes.
Every night his grandmother checked his soles
and would beat him if they’d been overused.
Camus learned that the ball
never arrived the way he expected it to
and people were no different.
The year my father was promoted
an entire school lunchroom chanted
Where’s your green card?
During games, he stood behind my goal
smoking at a safe distance from the other parents.
The ball was halfway between the forward and me.
I dove headfirst.
I woke up to the taste of teeth missing
and my father shielding me from the full sun,
blood on his hands and sleeves.
Hache’s mom died.
A few years later, he died too.
Alone, in a hospital.
It was the end of April.
A plague was beginning.
The last thing he said to me, months earlier,
was that Diego Rivera had gone blind.
Now Hache’s known
for lying to everyone
about everything
all the time.
This poem was true enough
when I first wrote it
and it’s even truer this time around.
But the truth is only half the story.
That’s what I was taught
and that’s what I learned.
In other words,
I never met Hache’s dog
but I would’ve looked after him forever.
Blood comes
and blood goes.
Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya’s work has appeared in The Offing, Electric Lit, Triangle House Review, and Joyland. His first novel, The Holy Days of Gregorio Pasos, is out now from Two Dollar Radio. He lives in Tucson.