CUANDO CUANDO CUANDO

Why do you remember her, that
Cuban woman singing Cuando cuando cuando
in the October night? That Bayside club
of mojitos and limes and sweet plantains,
sitting at the water's edge,
dipping your hand into the warm
darkness, the moon ghost haunting
the gulf and its smell of monkfish
and crabshells on the wind, her voice
filling the evening's sadness
with a desire you can only possess,
a yearning from somewhere ancient
and familiar, an insinuation, something
deeper, cuando cuando cuando,
how her bracelets slink and shimmy
as she sings, her mango skin, cuando,
how the needlefish nibble your fingertips,
the tingling sting of delight,
how there's nothing more
to say but to let the feeling come, that
temptation, cuando, her singing,
her arms calling out cuando cuando cuando,
the sheer feeling of feeling itself,
and when she calls you must feel
that feeling, you are alive, loving
love more than you can ever stand,
the fullness of that loss, that emptiness,
that fear: giving in to that song
like a shell held to the ear,
innuendos and intimations,
inklings and whispers,
the lyric of divine anguish.