Mango Street Parade

Here were palm trees for Christmas
Sugar sand and a melting sun
A mango street parade
First mirage slivers, then a loud wave
It swallowed you whole
With the rest of San Juan.

It was all makeshift
Fake beards and hand-me-down music
Girls with sheets for dresses
Stomping shaking colliding
Excitement had a monopoly on them all.

Goodbye elegance, hello colored lights
Caffeine vibrations and rum nights
They threw mangoes on the street
And candies in your hair
Melting in the heat, into
Heavy saccharine air.

Everyone a dancing candy
Wrapped, unwrapped, on
Cellophane streets
Sticky skin and sweat like
Syrup, dripping from
Body to body, from
Chin to chest, from
Sole to concrete.

A tropical soup
Of boiling dancing things
It caught you and
You danced, too
In wild shakes and feverish spins
Fighting hot wind
Fighting gravity
Fighting the memory of reality.

It was just a mango street party
And you, a mango too
But only briefly
Until you ripened and fell
To the sideline, no longer weightless
A broken spell.

You sat in wrapper heaps
Sweat now a quiet dew
Watching the parade
Parade on by, to
Other burning streets
Far away from you.