"The Box"

Click here to listen to Tomás Q. Morin read this poem.


So I remember the hidden: every night my zaydee
at the ballet watching Zizi
kicking her petite leg above the outstretched claws
of the chorus line as they moved in perfect ruby unison
through third position and then spun
their tulle skirts into a twirl.
All that I know of the interior paramour
I learned from patient zaydee sitting shirtless
off-stage in his old pajamas,
waiting for his crop-haired Zizi to flick
her gypsy fan onto his lap in a mighty crescendo
of leaps and bounds and how could I not love this
and him and all his knowledge of the carnal
life inside the box and so it is
for his sake alone I placate the lovers shaking their fists
in the park, pitched in battle over all the new thinking
outside the box they call their lives
and the faces they make as I pull from my coat
the Lobster Ballet I can never remember
because always I am too busy abandoning their hearts
and engaging the subtle mechanisms of dance
and pointing and blabbering in my delicious nervousness
so that I even forget to tell them they should hum
something Iberian or Basque
and that even "April in Paris" will do
as I gently shake the scarlet dancers of Carmen
to stockinged attention and then the watching,
the blessed watching of lovers
rediscovering the pageantry of the interior.

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