reading from my sequence of “Prison Poems.”
“Doesn’t he have gorgeous hair!” Not for the first time a woman reached for my head and ran her hand through my mess of dark curls. Her companion, a man in a leather vest and jeans, laughed tightly. His tag read: Vancouver Province.
Another woman touched my shoulder and said in a pained voice, “I’m so sorry about what’s happening in your country.”
The elections had been news lately. Fire bombings, a riot in the South.
Christ, I was hot. The room, though big, was crammed and I wished I could shrug off the jacket Daniel Rose had lent me. But underneath was a ratty white shirt and suddenly I felt self-conscious about it, perhaps because I knew its frayed collar would be spied instantly and would instill sympathy and orders for husbands to peel off their own shirts and offer them to the exiled poet. I wished people would stop giving me things, that just for once I could sling my arm over someone’s shoulder and say, “I’ll buy you a drink.” But they don’t want this: as a pair of hands holds out the shirt, the extra winter coat, I see eyes shining with hope and expectation. When I take, with mumbled thanks, what is offered, they smile with pleasure. They watch as I tug on the garment, pulling at too-short sleeves, and nod happily, but they desire more — the coat which touches my back is only part of it.
“Come and meet Stan Drury.” Rita pulled me through the thicket of people to the far corner, under a bleached painting of Queen Elizabeth the Second in her tiara. Wine slapped over my hand onto the cuff of Daniel’s silk jacket. As we tore through the crowd she shot back the biography of the man I was about to meet.
“Stan’s an important poet, not just here, but nationally. And hot to meet you since he’s just come back from your part of the world. Latin America figures large in his work. Stan?” She stopped in front of a huge grizzled man with tufts of grey hair held in place by a bandana. It was his T-shirt that made me gasp: CAFE DE LA LUNA with the familiar logo of two coffee cups tilting inward. The café where every evening of the week I would sit at my corner table with my fellow writers and intellectuals, arguing, moaning about the state of the world and our own fragile psyches. I felt my hand being enclosed by his rough palm then clamped by his other in a “brotherhood” shake.
“Good to meet you, man.”
Then he spoke in Spanish, in the slang of my city, with an accent so authentic that I jumped with recognition. “They making you their poster boy of the season?”
His voice was crisp and unsentimental, to show that he in no way romanticized the plight of the exile.
He dropped my hand. “You must know Gabriela Piñeda. She’s from your neck of the woods.”
Gabriela. Indeed I knew Gabriela with her affected high-toned voice, although she came from some hick town in the mountains where her father was a rancher. I knew about her endless manifestos and gringo pals and book contracts with a dozen countries. Yes, we all knew Gabriela. I could see her now, painted mouth curved downward as she examines my pathetic self — I who had dared to place a hand around her sainted waist.
I nodded cryptically.
“A remarkable woman,” Stan continued. “And the writing is damn good.”
As he spoke Stan began to move his hands expressively, in the way so many Canadians feel compelled to do when speaking to a Latino. He’s slept with Gabriela, of course. Another admirer set loose in the world. Soon she will be receiving an invitation to a conference, this time in Vancouver, all expenses paid, where she will captivate yet another audience.
I felt sick. The wine, which had dyed the sides of the plastic cup, had left a maroon stain on my wrist.
“I’m afraid I don’t know your work,” Stan said. “So I’m especially looking forward to hearing you tonight. We get so little first-hand testimony here: we’re a parochial bunch, as you’ve no doubt noticed.”
Rita nudged my elbow. “The snacks are running low; I gotta go warn Laura.”
Stan followed her exit with his eyes, not hungrily, but vaguely, as if he found it hard to focus in this crowded room, in this city, in this country. He had left his real self back in the Café de la Luna.
“I understand you were imprisoned.”
“Four months.”
He didn’t wince like the others, just nodded in a comradely way.
“The poetry of witness is not necessarily welcome in this country,” he said, pulling out cigarettes — Rojos! — and offering me one.
Gratefully I tugged one from the pack and held it a moment before slipping it between my lips. It had a familiar texture, slightly lumpy, and the smell was dank and uncompromising.
“It makes readers and listeners uncomfortable,” Stan went on. “They aren’t sure if it’s real poetry or political tract.” He smoked thoughtfully, brushed on one side by a tiny woman in a bowl haircut who was seeking to cross the crowded room. Her smile tightened as he laid a hand on her shoulder.
I spotted her name tag: “Lily Hunt; Arts Tonight.”
“Let me modify that,” Stan said. “For you, it’s fine. You have a right, in fact they expect the politics. But for me, it’s pretentious. A Canadian has no right to be engaged. We write pretty, well-crafted poems about bones we find on the beach, and the landscape of our lover’s skin.” He spat out a shred of tobacco that had become trapped between his teeth.
I slid my hand into the pocket of Daniel Rose’s navy blue jacket and clasped the folded sheets of “Prison Poems.”
“And he’s darn cute, to boot.” A tipsy feminine voice rang out and I felt, yet again, fingers lace through my hair. Startled, I looked into a familiar face: deeply lined, the wan skin lightened by a stripe of coral lipstick. She had interviewed me earlier for the co-op radio station, but then she had been serious, almost dour, clad in black overalls.
Stan snorted. “You’re the new pet. Last year they saved a Muslim biologist. But listen up…” He had to lean over to confide, being a good six inches taller than me. “Were you part of the Café de la Luna crowd?”
His paunch brushed my meager belly.
“I dropped by.”
“You know Sanchez? Patricio?”
I pretended to think. “Somewhat.”
“And Angel. What’s his last name, writes for El Tribunal —”
“Zubicueta.”
“That’s the one. You know him?”
“Of him.”
Stan looked disappointed. “Sounds like I met a different circle.”
“There are many circles in my town, many cafés.” How could I explain that I did not want to talk to this man about my friends and enemies? He would never understand that in my milieu there are a hundred conspiracies and alliances, old feuds and ambushes. To him we were the “Café de la Luna crowd,” a group of colourful characters that he felt honoured to meet.
“How many circles of dissident
