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| New Year's Eve fireworks in Punta del Este, Uruguay |
I was dismayed to see that my poem, "Celebration", a finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, was printed in the journal
Measure with a glaring typo!
So, here it is, printed as it should have appeared:
Celebration
A wash of molten silver slips along
the rippled black of Maldonado Bay
beneath this month’s blue moon. A
well-heeled throng
spills from the restos, as she
weaves her way
among them with a folding canvas
chair
down to the docks, far from all the
fuss.
No grapes to scarf, no new red underwear,
la gringa feels
de trop, superfluous.
As rockets blaze,
the revelers ooh and ah;
then when the
party’s over, rev their cars,
burn rubber round
the dark peninsula
till daybreak
clears the sky of lingering stars;
while she remains
and welcomes in the year
watching the
petrels dive then reappear.
—Punta del Este, Uruguay, December 31, 2009
Note:
It is a New
Year’s Eve custom in Spain and in many Latin American countries to eat a green
grape on each stroke of midnight, and to wear a new red undergarment, for good
luck during the coming year.
