Take 2.

TAKE 2.

When the sugar cane throws its silky seeds high into the bluest of Salvadoran skies,
November already,
The circus comes to town.

It blooms overnight, colorful petals one by one assembling themselves
Opening up to the stars, breathing in deep the brisk winds, the sleepy volcanoes.
The small, hardworking, calloused people of these lands will come to see.

We come, truckloads of us. We come and drink coffee in Styrofoam cups and eat tortas and
Popcorn, the young men drinking sugar cane liquor in the shadows, underneath trees, silent.
The tent opens and two sad beautiful women collect our dollar bills and we step in,
Into another world, the finest theater in El Salvador, dirt floors and wobbly wooden benches,
Cigarette smoke and the smell of beer permeate the air as we eagerly await the clowns,
The dancers, the jugglers, the trapizee, and the most famous character of all Latin America:
The maricón. We come mostly to see him.

We will die before saying it, but we all want to be the maricón, the faggot.
Stiletto heels, frayed jean skirt, a blond wig, and so much makeup may seem like lies,
But he dances well. He dances well.

We avoid eye contact, throw our liquor bottles, whistle, crack jokes with our buddies. Yet
We stare at his firm ass and cheap sequined silver shirt, carefully exposing his belly button and
The joke is on us.
He is the only one doing what he wants.

This is the stuff of love.
We might all well be maricones if we are brave enough to dance with all the jealous taunts,
The hisses of people too scared to dance. (Good circuses are full of mirrors).

I am on the stands, she has been in the ring, and tripped,
And I probably don’t have the strength to write the poem I need to about her.
It would have been too complicated to say some still foreign part of me would’ve liked to
Stand up and make my way down through the crowds of cowboys and dance.
It is easier to say, «How could she?, freak of nature for being so confused. Maricón. »

But there are no more sorries anymore.
We have both fucked up, the circus is already over.
He will dance again soon, a new song,
We have one more dollar folded deep in our jeans pocket.

We get into these rusty pickups and ride through the fields, the landscape as alone as space,
The moon burning bright,
Going back to our small homes and sleeping the night away, that damn
Maricón haunting our dreams.