Esmeralda

Cigarette voice and coffee hands
Two days south of Cartagena
And a full-on tropical sweat
Is shaking down her temples—fevered

Pipes are twisting her Calypso hips and
Dangerous Sargasso eyes list to port
Launching a thousand emerald parrots
Into oblivion with a single blink.

Just past every outstretched hand she
Leaps and then lets herself down
With such grace you would scarce
Expect to find in a terrestrial thing.

Steel drums are raining on her eyelids,
And even as the estranjeros imagine they see
Themselves in the exotic tone of her skin,
She is dropping the rhythm,

Slowing now to too many touches,
Passing now through too many hands.
There is terror blossoming on her swallow-lips
Rising from her belly in papier-mâché shrieks

To take wing in the quiet folds of night.
Who will hold back the line of dancers
While she flies above the cobbled streets?
There is one last ride through the jungle

And one more train to the coast
Before she can reclaim conch-shell dawns
And rinse her womb with rills of jasmine
And sweet, caramel sweat.

— James Norman Kerns
Cuenca, Ecuador 12/99

"Esmeralda" comes from Cuenca, Ecuador where I gave a strange woman flowers because they were so beautiful.