POEM: The Happy Moment on a Sad Friday

Published Tuesday, January 23, 2007 by Rose | E-mail this post

by Rosana Garcia

We were drinking in the name of her sadness, her anger,
her broken heart, sharing stories of male faults and failures.

But the song came, familiar, rhythmic, pulsing
in Spanish, a painful bittersweet jolt from the past,
from the island of my birth. The tears well in my
heart: the only thing to do is sweat them in dance.

I took his hand, led him out onto the circle of space
that appeared in this tiny, hip, American martini lounge
decorated with skinny, pretty, slim-jean wearing women
and attractive men, immaculately groomed, on the hunt.

He shouldn't have known how to lead, spin, hold, move.
In my slight fuzziness, my feet remembered everything
I ever learned at my abuela's parties in the mountains,
the hip sway, fancy footwork, and letting him lead.

I lost all my fear, all my worry, in the swirl
of the merengue beat that my hips know like
the taste of guava and mangoes, like the scent
of salt air, the sound of the wind in the palms.

So sweet, the way he stayed inside my fantasy
for awhile, let me, a stranger, pull him into
my homesick dance, my nostalgia moment,
my guilty pleasure, my escape from

Her eyes are bleary, her smile and mind plastered. Later,
she'll go home to her man, they'll kiss, they'll scream,
and she won't remember calling in the middle of the night.

(c) 2007 understar productions and Rosana Garcia