La salsa

Alors vint la salsa...
– Gino Ducreuil

I

     The salsa enters on the tiptoes of celery
its bongos are maroon leathery mushrooms
     And the fat singer after margaritas
is pulsating fire: Celia Cruz

II

     The little black angels deform
under the blasting wall of electric strings
     Willie Colón the outlaw in-law
and this is the moment Brunilda Ruiz rises

     from a vogue for an eternally long
second-long long bridge
     The span of her foot is the graves of Puerto Rico
and the glistening rainy streets of Nueva York

     Spanish words by Adrés Eloy Blanco
music by Manual Álvarez Maciste
      for this elating bow the salsa
now playing in some nightclub in París

– Johannes Beilharz (© 1981/2010)

One quarter elemental for napowrimo #17, something elemental.

Note
Some explanation might be in order here to make this less cryptic.

This poem came about some time after the purchase of El Baquiné de Angelitos Negros, a 1977 album by Willie Colón. The cover shows dancer Brunilda Ruiz, and I somehow wove her, salsa and the much older song by Eloy Blanco and Álvarez Maciste into this poem along with salsa queen Celia Cruz, transplanting the whole show to Paris and quoting a non-existent Frenchman to introduce it.