Alan Catlin
Alan Catlin has several new full-length books out including Last Call for Lazarus (Impspired) and How Will the Heart Endure? (Kelsay Books)
She Is Dancing a Heartbreak
Tango in a Plaza de Mayo
for all the mothers of the dis-
appeared, her red flaring skirt
a warning flag for the living
to beware all the infinite days
of the dead as embodied by
a jazzman dressed all in
black and hung as an effigy
by invisible threads, his dual
shadows cast on the blood-
stained cobblestones, images
of the extinguished life a hipster
leads playing liturgical notes
for the unforgiving and the lost,
their restless spirits represented
by a disembodiment of
instruments played by unseen
bluesmen, fatal critics of current
rulers, affairs of state, their music
so unearthly all dancing must
cease so that the lady in red
may sing as los gitanos,
the gypsies did, in a time when
all their worldly goods were on
fire and they were cursed to roam
forever, homeless exiles of an
endless night.
