An aged bondo-spackled Buick
pushes dust around its wheels
as it slithers up Brooklyn Avenue
toward La Tormenta, bar and dance club.
The Buick pulls up to clutter
along a cracked sidewalk
beneath a street lamp’s yellow luminance.
A man and a woman in their late 30s
pour out of a crushed side door.
They come to dance.
The man wears an unpressed suit and baggy pants:
K-Mart specials.
She is overweight
in a tight blue dress;
the slits up the side
reveal lace and panty hose.
They come with passion-filled bodies,
factory-torn like ropa vieja.
They come to dance the workweek away
as a soft rain buffets
the club’s steamed windows.
Women in sharp silk dresses and harsh
painted on makeup crowd the entrance.
Winos stare at the women’s flight across
upturned streets and up wooden stairs.
Men in slacks and cowboy shirts
or cheap polyester threads
walk alone or in pairs.
Oye compa, que onda pues?
Aqui no mas, de oquis …
Outside La Tormenta’s doors
patrons line up to a van dispensing tacos
while a slightly-opened curtain
reveals figures gyrating
to a beat bouncing off strobe-lit walls.
They come to dance
and remember
the way flesh feels flush
against a cheek
and how a hand opens slightly,
shaped like a seashell,
in the small
of a back.
They come to dance
and forget
the pounding hum
of an assembly line
and the boss’ grating throat
that tells everyone to go back to work
over the moans of a woman
whose torn finger dangles
in a glove.
They come to dance:
Former peasants. Village kings.
City squatters. High-heeled princesses.
The man and woman lock the car doors
and go through La Tormenta’s weather-stained
curtain leading into curling smoke.
Inside the Buick are four children.
They press their faces
against the water-streaked glass
and cry through large eyes:
Mirrors of a distant ocean.