Poem for National Poetry Month--"Apache Dance in Loose Park"

One of Kansas City's premier parks is Jacob Loose Memorial Park just south of the famous Kansas City Country Club Plaza. In this poem, it becomes a setting for an exploration of destructive passion and love late at night in the dead of winter. There are great loves that are not good loves or smart loves. Sometimes they turn deadly. Sometimes--if we're very lucky--we barely escape such loves with our skins intact, though hearts may be broken.

APACHE DANCE IN LOOSE PARK

The man and woman in the frozen park

at midnight are crazy. See

them dance—come together,

her eyes spitting, his aware of his sin.

Watch her rigid stance

melt and his slouch turn fierce.

With choreographed impulse, her hand extends

to touch his cheek. He jerks away

in pain or something rougher.

Her shoulders sag, then square

themselves and shrug. She pivots,

ready to leave. Now he reaches out,

spins her around, draws her

close. She struggles

against his arms and chest, hands fluttering, while

he drags her off the spotlit sidewalk.

Watch her glance at the dark bushes, then

at the strange hate

in his face. See how grim

her own grows, how

she tosses her head toward the night,

as if to say, “Go ahead.

Get it over with. Rape me, kill me,

end it somehow. You can’t want that

any more than I do.”

Now his face softens.

Once more she tries to touch.

He sways away from her outstretched fingertips.

They’re crazy. Listen

to her laugh, twisting loose

and whirling away from her opponent

in the dance or war

they’ve staged here

where all breath is visible

under the streetlamps. How fast

she runs to her car and leaves.

How unprepared for this step he is.

He can’t reach out

to stop her until her car is rolling

down the drive. In the rearview mirror,

she will see his hand lift,

his mouth open, his face twist,

and she will notice

what a stranger he is, older

and fatter and sadder

than she realized.

She will stop for coffee and doughnuts

and warmth, sit coughing and shivering

alone and hate every man

who eyes her. He will clutch his chest

alone under the streetlamp,

bowing to the audience of tree and frost,

then stumble, suddenly blind,

to his car and drink

himself to bed, only to dream

of shrubs hiding blood and bruised flesh

on the frozen ground, of how

a man can come so close to killing

what he loves.

Published in Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

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