THE SHANTY TOWN
If the city is a geometry of scraps and illusions, it is also the fragment of hunger which gobbles up yearning. A trained jaw and strong legs to run around corridors. A steel throat to endure the frost and dinosaur teeth that reminisce over absence. There were centuries of lava and shooting stars, meteorites that struck fear. Till the circle, the wheel, materialized; a round as a tondo. The legend, golden and slim, creating the fabrics with which we would cover our bodies with decorum.
If the city is the waste and unpeeling of the soul, it is also waiting. The skillful hands, the sharp wood; the metal sheets concealing supreme wrinkles and glances; the glass, frozen on the outside and cloudy on the inside from the warmth of the breath. The houses crammed together, intertwined by drains and plastic cables. The land, rising in red fragments; one on top of the other, red took over the sphere. But the reflection of the sky does not remain silent. Loaded with water or clear in winter, it is tattooed on the zigzagging brick, when some dusty Nikes go into orbit again, flat, over the slum that protects them. Seeking a truce.
—Albertina Carri, 2021