"Esta Noche"--A Poem by Mark Doty
Esta Noche
In a dress with a black tulips sheen
la fabulosa Lola enters, late, mounts the stairs
to the plywood platform, and begs whoever runs
the wobbling spot to turn the lights downto something flattering. When they halo her
with a petal-toned gel, she sets to haranguing,
shifting in and out of two languages like gowns
or genders to please have a little respectfor the girls, flashing the one entrancing
and unavoidable gap in the center of her upper teeth.
And when the cellophane drop goes black,
a new spot coronas her in a wigfit for the end of a century,
and she tosses back her hairrisky gesture
and raises her arms like a widow in a blood tragedy,
all will and black lace, and lipsyncs "You and Meagainst the World." Shes a man
you wouldnt look twice at in street clothes,
two hundred pounds of hard living, the gap in her smile
sadly narrativebut shes a monument,in the mysterious permission of the dress.
This is Esta Noche, a Latin drag bar in the Mission,
its black door a gap in the face
of a battered wall. All over the neighborhoodstorefront windows show all night
shrined hats and gloves, wedding dresses,
First Communions frothing lace:
gowns of perfection and commencement,fixed promises glowing. In the dress
the color of the spaces between streetlamps
Lola stands unassailable, the dress
in which she is in the largest sensefabulous: a lesson, a criticism and colossus
of gender, all fire and irony. Her spines
perfectly erect, only her fluid hands moving
and her head turned slightly to one side.She hosts the pageant, Wednesdays and Saturdays,
and men come in from the streets, the trains,
and the repair shops, lean together to rank
the artifice of the awkward or lovelyLola welcomes onto the stage: Victoria, Elena,
Francie, lamé pumps and stockings and always
the rippling night pulled down over broad shoulders
and flounced around the hips, liquid,the black silk of esta noche
proving that perfection and beauty are so alien
they almost never touch. Tonight, she says,
put it on. The costume is licenseand calling. She says you could wear the whole damn
black sky and all its spangles. Its the only night
we have to stand on. Put it on,
its the only thing we have to wear.
From My Alexandria, by Mark Doty (©1993), reproduced by permission of the author and University of Illinois Press.
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