Colorful skirts swirl lyric,
while castanet heels maintain meter.
Spanish floats the air, and Spanglish,
even English speakers roll their Rs.
Strolling El Mercado among gigantic roses
blooming red, pink, peach, and gold –
mind and mouth cannot help but spill iambs?
Many feel that Oxford with its dreaming spires
is more poetic, or Virgil’s Mantua, Basho’s Kyoto.
But in San Antonio,
poems bloom like bougainvillea,
lodge where a mason lays terra cotta tile, sprout,
stretch sunward, burst like spring winecups,
drunken the senses.
Poems are raucous grackles, tingling filagree earrings,
guitarrons of meandering mariachis.
They blend with traffic buzz, honeybee hum, birdsong.
They flutter in cut tissue banners – papel picados,
waft among scents of sizzling chilis
and cinnamon dusted sopapillas.
In this city of five missions, of Santos and Santería,
pencils choreograph intricate steps. Dancing.
Always dancing.
Ann Howells edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years. Recent books: So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Painting the Pinwheel Sky (Assure Press, 2020). Chapbooks Black Crow in Flight and Softly Beating Wings were published through contests. Ann’s work appears in Nimrod, Spillway, and I-70 Review, among others.
