July 2017
After teaching at a college in South Florida for thirty years, I retired, and my wife and I have traveled around the country, and moved twice in the past two years. Now that we are settled, we are looking forward to exploring our new city and making new friends. Some of my poems have appeared recently in such journals as The Broken Plate, The Comstock Review, Exit 7, The Lake, and Third Wednesday. Amsterdam Press published a chapbook of my poems entitled The Arboriculturist in 2010. Check out my author's page on Facebook or go to my blog at http://www.michaelminassian.com.
Author’s Note: I first met my friend Jorge in July of 1981 when we both taught at a Creative Arts Camp in New Milford, Connecticut. Jorge was the dance instructor and I taught creative writing. We became good friends and both returned the following summer to teach again. Jorge and I kept in close touch over the next few years, and he was one of the first people I sought out when I returned to the US after spending a year teaching overseas. I was devastated when I heard of his death. He was the first person (but unfortunately not the last) I knew personally who was a victim of the AIDS epidemic. I wrote this poem in his memory. He was an articulate, funny, warm, and genuine human being, passionate about life and his art. I still miss him today.
Again in Dancing Shoes
“I love to dance...I think that that is really myself, when I dance...in those few seconds in the air, I experience the feelings I have in my dreams.”
- Jorge Ledesma (1949-1988)
It must have been a dream;
I thought I saw you
dancing on 5th Avenue
spinning with your arms
akimbo, your feet not even
touching the pavement;
cars and pedestrians passing
right through you.
It must have been a dream;
I thought I heard you laughing
when I walked past your summer house,
your dancing tights still
fluttering on the line out back,
dancing in the wind,
dancing without a body
between the trees and shaking leaves.
It must have been a dream;
I thought I heard you talking
like the night we sat up drinking
and you told me every dancer’s
motion had meaning, the whole
body speaking through gestures
traveling from hips, torso, shoulders,
arms and hands to fingertips.
It must have been a dream.
What did it mean when you held
your dancer’s body still
on the hospital bed?
And did you finally dance off the planet
in one last pirouette of pain?
-originally appeared in Karamu, 1995.
© 2017 Michael Minassian
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