Poetry
Westerfield, Jr. Nancy G.
POEMS Nancy G. Westerfield Go Dancing But you did not. And tonight, reading Yet another obituary for a dancer Dead of it, I recast you in your roles: Le Corsair, Scheherezade's slave, The...
...We are Sped upon our ways with false symptoms Of health, the motion sickness barely Noticed as a passing vertigo of stress, Until less and less our lives move us To advance, and we are, we say, losing momentum...
...And tonight, reading Yet another obituary for a dancer Dead of it, I recast you in your roles: Le Corsair, Scheherezade's slave, The awakening Prince...
...We are gaining it...
...No, you did not go dancing...
...Once, in this very Room, you sat dancing: even at rest With legs crossed, drink in hand, You were a sprinter of words across musical Spaces, all the outstretched untangle Of muscle still sensuous with speed...
...the last Extension of your long, curved feet From the bedsheets was bone and open Sore, to be touched with tender horror...
...Begun at birth with that Colossal launching out of innerspace of womb Into planetary orbit, we pursue orbiting Breakneck, however uneventful orbiting may Become: less circling the globe on momentous Pilgrimages than a daily round of minute Distances, a grindstone treadmill...
...My partner, somewhere they go dancing...
...Motion Sickness We die of it, whatever the duly Notarized cause of death on the official Certificate...
...At speeds surpassing light, The snatch from orbit comes, launching Us colossally into innerspace of night...
Vol. 119 • December 1992 • No. 21
