Cancún Man

I found me all by myself in a basement room in Hudsonville, Michigan of all places.

You were holding

my textile constitution,

weighing the small fact

of my feet

in your palm,

thinking.

I watched my ankles fold

without the reservation

of human joints.

I shook my little maracas

and you smiled.

In your hands my limbs were bouncy,

expressive.

I was something special.

Clearly, I came from the sun

now set across my cheeks,

over cinnamon burnish.

Never not thinking about his own,

a carpenter brought me here to make you happy. Just like my dad,

he was the sun once. Look at me shuffling. I'm putting on a show now,

front row seats for your unstitched audience. They don't think much of a Cancún Man, dancing for sympathy he doesn't want. But you, you think the world of me So I plop up and I plop down. Tip my straw hat— cha cha cha I've been stuck in this water closet, ends clinging to my popsicle sticks waiting for you. The man on a honeymoon did not live long enough to watch me bust these moves, yet here he is, showing me how.

And why I seize my name, because to be a Cancún Man

is to be loved by you.

Ay caramba! I wore my nice sandals,

trimmed my tiny mustache. No one can take this moment from me. Back in Cancún,

tongues are still sticking to the palm trees.

Hola, ¿cómo estás? Everyone says, Even the carpenter.

who just can't wait to tell his son close your eyes, and lay me down by the flatness of my butt.

I hope he keeps you company.

Qué bonito es

con su camisita de cuadros.

If you take me home I'll show how to salsa,

tell you how I learned. Only you will know the inflections in my accent, how to imitate my gestures. Watch how I inhabit this rootless body. Watch how I remember. Before the sun ran behind the sandbank,

on his last sip of paradise,

the wood man asked me

Do you know what he means to me, Cancun Man?

Everything, I said in my best anglophone clack.

The string on my back pinched,

lifted me up. Go on then.