Heartbreak Hibiscus
by
Steven P. Schneider
Steven P. Schneider
Steven P. Schneider is professor of English at the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA). He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives, Unexpected Guests, and Prairie Air Show. His scholarly books on contemporary American poetry include A.R. Ammons and the Poetics of Widening Scope (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) and a recent collection of edited essays entitled The Contemporary Narrative Poem (The University of Iowa Press.) He is the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts Big Read grants and a Fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.
The hibiscus flowers
silky and red
like the dresses pretty señioritas
wear at the cantina
in the Casa del Palmas hotel
on a hot summer night.
We long to touch
their soft petals,
to hold them in our hands
and smell their fragrance.
They blossom and flower
for a few short cumbias,
then vanish
as if some illusion
a magician has planted
to deceive us
by their beauty.
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