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
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.