LatinosUSA

Nonchalance, like Jeter robbing a hit
from Suzuki at short in Seattle,
an away-game, making it look easy;
like an Ester Willams water ballet
in an early 40s flick, bodies like flowers,
three rehearsals for one shot.

I thought it was ease under pressure.
What you don’t have,
not you, dear reader, necessarily,
but a you who goes hysterical
when a girl spills a glass of milk;
you flare up like it’s a carbon monoxide leak
and shoo her out the door.
She cries under an oak tree,
tears rooted in your lack of sprezzatura.

I once saw a teacher lose it
with third-graders. I, their guest,
felt awful for they what did, or didn’t do.

When my mother caught me smoking
by the river, she dragged me home.
My legs caught a belt’s buckle end.
My father’s excuse for her hysteria,
her thyroid. Better to think of the water
ballet, bodies moving in and out,
like one flower unfolding.

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