Poetry from The Literary Review

Two from a Filipino Dance Suite

LUISA IGLORIA

1. Watching the Tango Queen

a stockinged leg extends
beyond the dangerous

slit of velvet
sheath—

she has practiced:

the smoldering
look,

          snap
of sleek, dark
head, timed

perfectly
to the beat

of “Hernando's
Hideaway”—

                the little kick
backward through the pleat

of the gown, the precise
swiveling of her hips

like a blade
in the cage of her dance

instructor's hands

Perhaps it was the wrong
choice?

—after all, those clothes (o
the valleys outlined in a breast-
plate of taffeta)! the moves (what
formal proclamations of desire
sketched sinuously by arched
insteps)!

The music should free
her, the dimmed lights be
helpless to subdue

the teasing, rising
percussion; so why—

in that final dip
when the heels click
to a gunshot
hush—

                and the head, led by the hand on the back
of the waist, should swoon,

in a rush, with the soul
to the floor—

               tell me why
not even one flyaway, kiss-
me curl

           escapes from her tight
helmet of hair,
                    when by this time

more than the seams of her hose,
their cold spill and double
phalanx of rhinestones,

           should be
     coming
undone

2. Video Nights, with Electric Glide

this story, because the heroine
seems to just let tragedy after tragedy
take her. Different men, same

story; the same old steps, and finally
the scene of her capture. The following
night we watch Susan Sarandon

and Geena Davis becoming fugitives,
in one wild ride through desert
towns. Questions are raised—

freedom and choice, bowing
to the common wisdom (or so
it's called) and knowing one's place;

even if there's no big lecture,
we're pleased to see she appreciates
how Thelma and Louise have chosen

to go with attitude and verve. For some
strange reason, all this makes me think
of a community picnic we went to

weeks ago, when it was ninety-nine
in the shade, but the United Pinoy Dance Club
was dedicatedly pivoting through the four-

by-four moves of the Electric
Glide: one-two-three-
four, with a kick or a “grape

vine” and the double cha-cha
shuffle. Everyone lined up, eight
deep and six across, keeping time

like rows of metronomes or wind-
mills, while the summer heat
uniformly basted park grounds,

bodies, picnic tables. Vapors
clamored for attention, rose from chafing
dishes and nearly melted Tupperware

trays: egg rolls, blood
stew; the caramel glaze of flan, spit-
roasted pork— the food itself

ranged out like maps: channel
after channel, a string
of edible islands—

over which the exiled tongue
could trace that sweet, electric
slide into some kind of promised

remembrance of itself. One-two-
three-four, past sundown, when the sun spun,
slipped into a darkness identical to the previous

night's, the one before it, the rest to come
after. Or is that true? To be immersed,
carried along in a wave of sameness—
to learn the social skill of employing
peripheral vision for the recovery
of missed steps. When I walk

through identically shimmering silks, airy
pineapple fibers, tuxedos dancing in rows
at a dinner party, I imagine

that the simultaneous metallic report of their heels
is an army advancing; it's almost possible to believe,
as Thelma and Louise perceived,

in a line, a breakaway
edge, a margin—

somewhere up ahead,
only waiting to be crossed

and leaped over.