Synkroniciti is stoked to welcome back poet Richard Stimac of St. Louis with “Purrrrr,” a bewitching meditation on the feline nature of the tango.
“Tango is a cat/ most treat like a dog:/ they play with it roughly,/ try to teach it stupid tricks.”
Richard’s opening gambit is both playful and sharp: a good‑natured reminder that tango—like any practice that braids the spiritual with the physical—loses its mystery the moment we try to control or domesticate it. Yoga, hiking, even meditation suffer the same fate when trendiness eclipses presence, when the focus shifts to gear, lingo, and performance.
Tango, in Richard’s telling, is not a pastime to be mastered but a creature to be approached with devotion. Like a cat, it demands attention to its patterns and personality, not empty choreography. It knows when we’re phoning it in, when our heart isn’t there.
What makes the poem sing is the tenderness beneath the whimsy, the sense that this dance, when honored, offers a luxurious purrrrr of connection, a reminder of how alive we can feel when we meet the moment on its own terms.
Richard Stimac lives in the St. Louis, Missouri (USA) area. He has published a poetry book, Bricolage (Spartan Press), two poetry chapbooks, and one flash fiction chapbook. In his work, Richard explores time and memory through the landscape and humanscape of the St. Louis region.