Poem by Lorraine Caputo
DANCE FOR A NEW YEAR
The near-midnight streets
are littered with
the frenzied sales of this day
Someone sweeps them
into large piles
& sets them ablaze
On one corner a family sits
drinking to music
& the man in the bright pink wig dances
On corners
& midways down blocks
the Merry Widows of this dying year
stop cars for coins
dancing, lying atop hoods
& the man in the bright pink wig dances
On stages decked with eucalyptus
Old Man Years slump in plastic chairs
a DJ spins, a young woman sings
& the man in the bright pink wig
dances with abandon
The midnight hour
the Old Men are dragged to
the center of those cobblestone streets
gasoline poured & set afire
& the man in the bright pink wig
dances with frenzy
As far as the streets climb
steeply up, the fires blaze, fireworks
explode
& the man in the bright pink wig
frantically dances
to forget he cannot go home
to his war-rent country
his family cannot get out
his uncle dies of poisoned water
a wife to be found, a family to be formed
Heavy smoke filled the narrow streets
stinging eyes, burning lungs
creeping past shuttered shops
creeping past the migrant indigenous
families come to the city for work
round dancing to Andean cumbia
& the man in the bright pink wig
dances, dances
About the Poet
Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 100 journals in Canada, the US, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa; 11 chapbooks of poetry, including the upcoming Notes from the Patagonia (dancing girl press, 2016); and 17 anthologies. In March 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada chose her verse as poem of the month. Caputo has done over 200 literary readings, from Alaska to the Patagonia. For the past decade, she has been traveling through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.
