Scot Siegel
Santa Fe, Fiesta
September 11, 2011
1.
One gnaws a roasted pork leg, ropes
my stare
from across the lawn
of the town square. Full-bodied
and brown,
she’s beautiful.
2.
Her sister, at least
eight years younger
squats,
applies tangerine
lip-
gloss,
tucks
her left
bosom
back
inside
the white vee-
neck
tee.
3.
I am standing in the shade
of a burnt-orange
garden wall
where Georgia
O’Keeffe’s ghost
dabs yellow
brush-
strokes
from the moist
mouths
of fresh
pinion
blossoms.
4.
I wish I were
born
in New Mexico
in the shadow
of the Sangre
de Cristo;
half-Pueblo,
half-Chicano,
I could be
happy here.
5.
When two boys meet
on the streets of
Santa Fe
it is a mute
drum-beat:
part-
war chant
part-
mariachi.
6.
Here are the ripped
shoulders of
brothers
with arched
backs,
whose forearms
flex,
and whose swagger of
toothy grins,
with fist-pumps to boot,
make a white
like me
jealous.
7.
They meet
at dusk
to Claps!
of fists;
elbows knock
knuckles
unfold
fingers,
which like cocks’
tail-feathers
fan-out
and flutter
then duck
then veer
to clasp
and dive
like hawks
embraced
in a familial
hand-
shake--
8.
I saw and heard the racket
commence
across the square
when one muttered
“Hey Brother”
amidst the laughter
and polka
of Fiesta--
9.
At first, the men converged
like slow arrows;
but they met,
in a quick clutch
of:
I love ya, Bro’!
which echoed against
the orange
stucco
of a minimart;
then brushed the bricks
of the Museum
of Modern Art;
then refracted
and were absorbed
by the four-hundred
year-old timbers of
a conquistador’s
palace.
10.
When the women finally turned
and grinned,
having watched the dance
of full-grown boys
long enough,
the chest-shoves must have meant,
the men would not fight,
and the women could return to
pantomiming
the same old rumors
and refrains
against the ash-white
stones
of the federal
courthouse
as a riot
of Sunday nightfall
church bells
signaled the end
of another year’s
Fiesta.
Scot Siegel lives in Oregon where he works as a town-planning consultant and serves on the board of the Friends of William Stafford. His most recent book of poetry is Thousands Flee California Wildflowers (Salmon Poetry, 2012). He received a fellowship-residency from Playa in 2012. His poems are anthologized in the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual (UK), Open Spaces: Voices from the Northwest (University of Washington Press, 2011), and Before We Have Nowhere to Stand (Lost Horse Press, 2012), among others. He also edits the online poetry journal Untitled Country Review. www.redroom.com/author/scot-siegel/
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