Spine

She takes the outside ring
in camaraderie, posed on tempo
(a rhyme) waiting for a cue.

Rouse the bell, loom the skill
skilled at tilt. Linguist of her time,
from shoulders alone she riffs

syncopated rhythms in her spine
for all the nooses in the mind
her partners loosen.

Her arms grow tall as if conducting
her own improv, and off she goes
careening: momentum, joy, lift.

 

Feet

Pointe-feet, shoe-feet in a strut,
you step and skip, lift on brick-foot,
rotate thighs, invent a leap.

Colors strobe across the room.
Tiny disco mirrors on your body
spin a thousand blinking poses.

Dreams are yours: to jag the hips
against the correspondence of the toes,
swing the ancient shapes into calypso.

From tuile in 1832 to horizontal tutus
(it sawed a woman right in half)
skirts showcased allegro legs. 

I lost my leg-line long ago,
but feel momentum in my toes,
wildflowers in the body leaning.

 

Oranges

The dialect of the song
telegraphs truth
that hangs around. 

Hieroglyphs float
over the city.
Visions of Lascaux,
a horse’s spine
a million years ago. 

A dancer trips
over her reflection
when the mirror
does not respond.
She grows eyes
up and down her spine
becomes looser
when her breath is gone. 

A thousand sequences
appear when a trombone
suggests a note and love
excites the strings.
(What else to call
the chance of things?)

The world is quiet.
Orange rind scents the day.
A firefly or a shark,
reconnaissance on the sea,
Grosse Fugue, or a parabola,
experience a day
in the exact same way as me.