Taking on the Local Color: Poems

Taking on the Local Color

Taking on the Local Color It was the night before the Carnivale a blue night and several dancers, they said, turned the Hilton into fire. And several storerooms and then, of course, windows, held blue costumes, feathers, a corset of red: They said, they said when you were there you wanted to be there they said you left your clothes and took to the streets body burning, in a red corset you left the streets, they said. They said, sometimes you never came back. =f Warmth of the afternoon, your skin to mine. You bend over the sink, arcing shades of skin, of hair, my hands in henna and your crinkled mane. The stink of vegetation. After an hour: my hair disconsolate, the same. Yours a burning bush. Prophetic. A desert of change. * Remember the wisdom of comfortable drunks: ''Don't give me any of this we shit." The "we" of pleasant evenings and the talk. Perched over Moroccan tea the pattern is lively. 35 Taking on the Local Color It was the night before the Carnivale a blue night and several dancers, they said, turned the Hilton into fire. And several storerooms and then, of course, windows, held blue costumes, feathers, a corset of red: They said, they said when you were there you wanted to be there they said you left your clothes and took to the streets body burning, in a red corset you left the strE'E'ts, they said. They said, sometimE's you never came back. * Warmth of the afternoon, your skin to mine. You bend over the sink, arcing shades of skin, of hair, my hands in henna and your crinkled mane. The stink of vegetation. After an hour: my hair disconsolate, the same. Yours a burning bush. Prophetic. A desert of change. * Remember the wisdom of comfortable drunks: "Don't give me any of this we shit." The "we" of pleasant evenings and the talk. Perched over Moroccan tea the pattern is lively. 35 A fire of red; a wall of blue. A wailing vegetation we put on: I love your rug. Postscript: I love your rug. 36 A fire of red; a wall of blue. A wailing vegetation we put on: I love your rug. Postscript: I love your rug. ...