Flamenco

Three wooden chairs
Backs to the rough-painted wall
Taut, like guitar strings
Ready to exhale their staccato notes
Far into the crossbeams
Frames now creaking with
Slow muscular sorrow
Resonating with each eruption
Shaken with each clap clap
The fiery vibrations coursing
Through the lignin; knots
Moved as they have never moved

Four legs thrown into confusion
By the stamping snorting bull
Boiling in terror at the whirling
Red dress and piercing stare
Forcing the wailing and weeping
Into the grain, along the grain
And across the entranced grain
The back of the chairs now
Pressed hard against the world

Three chairs made animate
With Promethean fire
The dancer, every pore of her
Exporting life, a reverse baptism
Deluging the transfixed onlookers
With the man’s plaintive tones
And the woman’s sinuous dance
Her black shoes invisible
In speed and the hot dust

There is no escape
We are all buried
The flamenco has ended
All individuality
And pooled the life of us all
Into its font
It is our complete selves
That was sung into one flame
Until that defiant shout of silence
Cools the three chairs
And we are returned to this world:

Where we were taken
No one will ever know.