When they closed the bar after 20 some years,
I danced with tie-dyed Millie.
I danced with women I didn't know.
I danced with men accidentally.
I danced with the sweetest rueful grin
for my erotic ambition,
the way it tossed its tangled net
over the beer-stained tables,
spilling out to the parking lot,
into old Toyotas, the backs
of Fords and Subarus,
I danced with a toad I saw
who was grave as Sitting Bull,
who also seemed to know
in time the fly would come to him,
though I never had the patience.
I'd always slide back into the bar
and devour the music of
white people shaking their asses
in joyful desperation.
I’d drink in every juke and hitch,
unable to stop my restless
toes from tapping though
I could never dance a lick.