When you dance it’s as if
you gather the music
into yourself,
into the softness
of your diaphragm and belly,
and smear it through your body,
along the long cords of you —
tendons, neurons, axons, veins
spine, lungs, bowels, hips —
and extrude it down the pipes of your lean limbs.
When you dance you keep your arms
straight by your sides, point and wag
and jerk your hands,
quiver your body like a zephyred leaf,
and stare at your feet, which you shuffle.
When you dance it’s as if your legs
and arms
and eyes
are pulled toward ground
by the music’s grand
unified force. In all my life
you’re the only one
I’ve ever met
who dances
like that.
First published in my chapbook q finger (PressPress, March 2011).