Now - when the sun slipslides tipsy down a buttery sky
When your laugh heats up to pop like corn past your teeth
When the lace is damp at your neck
and your secrets send shivers through your limbs.
Now is the hour for dancing.
Here in an earthquake of drums
Under crackling constellations of shining eyes
Here in a rolling landscape of bodies
Where bone pulls new shapes from pliant flesh
In this meandering river of sweat and perfume
Here is the hour for dancing.
Full of jiggle and jive,
you plunge into the crowd
drowning in sound with your mouth wide open.
A body finds yours and fills
your hands with damp shirt and solid shoulder.
His movement burns through you like whiskey,
You feel his echo in your own wriggle
when you pull up close.
Losing your edges to this flesh in your hands,
your heart thunders under your dress.
Together there in the musky darkness,
time runs off you like sweat.
You are lost, swinging wild,
lost in the hour of dancing.
© 1993 Barbara McAfee
Please contact Barbara for permission to use poem -
(612) 840-9255
