Blast moved to rural Argentina.  The first thing

he did was take to horses and burn his passport.

It had his real name from a previous life and the sun

that ate through the back of his neck each day

demanded something different.  His parents sat in

dusty old bingo halls where the winter still iced the roads

sitting on numbers that would never come up.  Wiping tired neck sweat

from hanging clouds of nicotine and praying to clumsy Lost & Found

gods that could have been worshipped by anybody.

Replaced just like that.  And the gauchos of the Rio broke

the horses with a handsome stern brutality. Escaped Nazis in the new land.

Herding cattle through these blood crazed hills as though their daughters

were bleeding for the heavens and even the slop in the dog bowl

could see that.  The sign of the cross over the chest from everyone

you passed in the street.  Blast never believed all that nonsense

but he knew who ran the town.

 

And his current live in was the daughter of the local sheriff.

That meant there were rules to everything.  Rules to break.

His girl had changed her name as well.  To Lolita after watching

the movie.  She never had the temperament for Nabokov or the

patience for books.  All she knew was that she was young

and the world was old which meant it wanted her or what she had

in the worst way.  She was desirable and she knew it.  Each time

she opened her legs was an event.  Blast was busy with the horses

which meant the other horses around town were busy with her.

And soon word got around that the easiest horse to break

wasn’t a horse at all and that Blast was in over 20 grand

to the local madam for goodies.  Which meant he started taking

side jobs for the cartels and drinking three times his share.

 

Blast never talked, but the wrong people thought he had

which meant his tongue was cut from his mouth and sent

to the lead prosecutor in Buenos Aries.  Wrapped as a Christmas gift 

because even the murderous want to be festive.  His body was likely feed

to the very horses he broke.  No one knows anything if you ask

them, which a few have done in the inevitable form of a question.