Piñata Solo

Happy National Poetry Month from Stance on Dance!

BY LIZ BOUBION; ILLUSTRATION BY CAMILLE TAFT

In the beginning, I am a beet red baby born in a heat wave in the LA basin.

Candy melts inside a pinata moon hanging in the backyard

Four sweaty brothers with grass-stained knees line up with a baseball bat

Papa pulls the rope

Mom sleeps in the shade

I am suspended in the air by two sisters fighting over who will hold the baby

 

Their tallons begin to slip as they pull

(Dale dale dale)

I am slipping

(No pierdas el tino)

She is sleeping

(Porque si lo pierdes)

They are fighting

(pierdes el camino)

who will catch me?

Pulling skin off the bone

They have more color,

more language,

and they are hungry

The pinata moon breaks

And I fall…

Into the Great Alone.

 

On the ground with no skin,

I get lighter

breaking up into small pieces of

pink, yellow, green

Salt water taffy – wrapped in wax paper…

 

enough to go around for everyone

 

I am generosity.

~~

Present Time

 

yo soy una medialuna

pero soy un todo mujer

 

Is being a whole woman enough?

I am only fractions of all the other things

 

Half Mexican, half Canadian, half a mother, wait… a whole mother, but only 50% of the time

 

How can a mother be half?

How can the moon be half?

 

The moon is always whole.

You just can’t always see her.

~~

It’s not true that no one caught me

 

The earth took me for her own

 

There is a reason for gravity

 

Tiny sticky hands gather me up

one

piece

at

a

time

Pinata solo

Liz Boubion is a dance artist in the Bay Area, the curator of the Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers, and artistic director of the Pinata Dance Collective.

Camille Taft is a seventeen-year-old dancer living in Longmont, CO, who has trained throughout her life in primarily ballet and modern dance. With both her parents as visual artists, she has always appreciated the excitement that comes from a collaboration of mixed media, and was thus overjoyed to have the opportunity to work with Stance on Dance.