EDGE OF THE DANCE FLOOR
This poem by Carlos Gómez is a sample from the recent issue of The Ocotillo Review depicting the depth of emotion and internal conflict epitomized by the poet’s self examination. This is an example of what we want to share with our readers. Deadline for submissions to Volume 3.2 close March 31st. The theme is World Music > Indigenous Music > Ethnomusicology. Send us your best and join Carlos in being paid for your art!
Edge of the Dance Floor
after Terrance Hayes
What are you
a faggot? She asked, my palm
offered like a fist
of tulips—a man takes
what he wants—as the bassline
flooded our bodies
into a starved harmony
of salt. I clawed her waist, the nearest
corner swallowing
us whole as her head
tumbled towards a cemetery of three-
day-old beer. In the epileptic
surge of strobe, she looked
woman, as all the boys smiled
fanged in stage smoke.
We were told nothing
was off-limits. A shy kid
in oversized jeans un-
snapped the bra of the fresh-
men just within reach. None of us survived
that night. We stand forever
on a precipice
we did not choose, glance back
at the mirages
we became. My eyes
were better closed, fear in the hull
of my gut—all I see now:
a sprawl of men carrying
the ache we recognize better
than men whose names
we borrow, the grief
umbilical. The night my child was
born, the cord refused
our baby that first heavy gulp
of breath, heartbeat dissipating into
a tapestry of mechanical sounds.
I thought life was the only
question heavy as an ancient anchor on
my lungs until my body sighed
as though the gun jammed
next to my temple when I found out
my child was not a boy.
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Winner of the 2015 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared in the North American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, BuzzFeed Reader, Rattle, CHORUS: A Literary Mixtape (Simon & Schuster, 2012), and elsewhere.
