Dancing to Flaco Jimenez at the Twin Oaks Cantina

Vincent Hostak

July 5, 2026

The slowest of the dances 

ever performed at the Twin Oaks Cantina

must be that of the two live oaks

locked in a sensuous embrace

above the rust red patio.

The next, perhaps, was that of

the Queen Mother of Wasps, who, with a belly

full of bald-faced babies built

a city where they all would live

right above the dusty dance floor.

The nest’s hollow, empty now.

All grown up, the bald-faced babies flew away 

and along a crooked river 

found fields alight with trumpet vines.

(Drunk on nectar, wasps polka best).

The nest’s now packed with fairy lights.

Lights which dip and glow along those old dancers’ hips.

I swear they know the cumbia,

because whenever Flaco plays,

the old, grey hanging city sways.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living with his family and faithful canine, Lola, near the Front Range of Colorado. His recently published poems are found in the journals The Dewdrop (Vanessa Able, Editor-In-Chief), Sonder Midwest, The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and the Texas Poetry Assignment.  His contributions also appear in the anthologies The 30th Annual Poetry Ink Anthology (Moonstone Arts, Philadelphia, 2025), Lone Star Poetry, and The Senior Class-100 Poets on Aging (Lamar University Press, Laurence Musgrove, Editor). His podcast on classic and contemporary poetry, and the novel ways it reaches audiences, relaunches in 2026.