Karissa Ho
Confessions on the Dance Floor
Saúl Hernández
While I dance for three weeks, the walls of the club sweat.
The scent of sulfur & vanilla from a man’s armpit twirls around me.
Later, he pins me against a wall & I laugh beams of color
reflecting from the disco ball. The lights remind me I may never see the Northern Lights
in this lifetime. I don’t think I’ll ever find love.
Amá tells me to be careful of colors, they speak.
The man unbuttons my shirt. I’ve been alone for so long,
this is the only way I know how to survive.
Beauty touched me once, it asked me: How do you move in all this silence?
I’ve been collecting birthday candles, holding on to wishes
because magic keeps me alive—
I am more afraid of love than of death.
I trace my nose across the man’s neck,
the way I traced it across my bed when my lover left me.
It still surprises me when a man starts a fire he can’t control.
The man tonight laughs when I smell him.
The music begs us to fold. Every sound around us
reminds me nothing can stay hidden in the dark.
I don’t know if my parents will ever accept me for what my body does
when it’s hungry. My hands search for the man’s heartbeat.
The beating reminds me of time I thought about taking a knife to my wrist.
I’m not a good dancer but this music knows secrets about life.
I wonder if people see me as a fire, not wanting to go out with one blow.
Maybe tonight I’ll finally go home
or maybe this man’s mouth is a window to another dance floor.
Saúl Hernández is a queer writer from San Antonio, TX who was raised by undocumented parents. Saúl has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. As a finalist for The Wisconsin Poetry Series, Saúl’s first poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is out now, University of Wisconsin Press. He’s the winner of both 2022 Pleiades Prufer Poetry Prize judged by Joy Priest & the 2021 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize judged by Victoria Chang. Saúl is a finalist for the 2024 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize & Best of The Net. Saúl’s work is forthcoming/featured in the American Poetry Review, Sundog Lit, Poetry Daily, The Slowdown, Literary Hub, Columbia Journal, Pleiades, Split This Rock, Frontier Poetry, Poet Lore, Foglifter Journal, Oyster River Pages, Cherry Tree, Atlanta Review, Quarterly West, PANK Magazine, Pidgeonholes, The Acentos Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Normal School, Rio Grande Review, and Adelaid Literary Magazine. He’s a Macondista, a 2021 Tin House Alum, & a 2024 Lambda Fellow. He currently lives in San Antonio, TX.