As Sweet As That by Joan Jobe Smith (ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER Series)

As Sweet As That
by Joan Jobe Smith

When she was in a good mood because my dad had
come home early for supper and told her
her biscuits and honey tasted as good
as his mother’s or because he’d said
he’d take us to see Forever Amber
the movie she’d been wanting to see
my mother would sing while we did dishes
her washing me drying
and she would whistle too and
I’d get embarrassed.
“Why don’t you ever sing?” she’d ask me.
and I’d answer “I don’t know,” and
she’d tell me about being young like me, but
a little older and how after she’d done the dishes
she used to meet my father
at the town square in Paris, Texas
and all of the young folks would sing and dance
while my father and some of the others
played the guitar and they’d do the Texas 2-step
and the jig and the shuffle and my father
would lay down his guitar and do a tap dance just
like Fred Astaire careful
not to get his white shoes and white trousers dirty
and when the sun went down they’d all sit
in the park and watch the fireflies
flitting in the cottonwood trees. And
I’d think to myself putting away
the dinner plates
how I’d never be able to sing as
sweet as that.

PHOTO: Glowing fireflies in field of grass by Fernando Gregory.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This is one of at least 100 poems I’ve written about my mother.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: My mother and father in their young happy days in San Francisco, California (Christmas, 1944).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joan Jobe Smith, founding publisher/editor for 40 years of PEARL literary journal and Bukowski Review, Pushcart honoree, UK 1998 Forward Prize finalist, has had her cartoon art, poetry, reviews, essays, fiction, food articles, and recipes published/featured internationally since 1950, when at age 10 her first poem, a rhyming aphorism, winner of a Red Cross safety poster competition, appeared on billboards. Her most recent chapbook, Made in the Shade was published by UK’s Tangerine Press, 2021. Her signature Bukowski profile CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Epic Glottis: His Art & His Women (& me) was published in 2012 by Silver Birch Press. She lives in Long Beach, California, with her machinist-poet husband, a Joe Hill Award recipient, Fred Voss.

PHOTO: Joan Jobe Smith and Fred Voss, her machinist-poet husband since 1990, in Morro Bay, California.

Good Memory by Donna Best (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Good Memory
by Donna Best

Our days were full of fizz and mint
not hunched over and grizzled.
We poured highballs in summer heat
slipped and slept through it
and desire sighed a lilt, not dull
nor offensively brilliant, until

my love’s arm rounded me from behind
and locked on my waist. His nose had
drunk the pungent sizzle of onion and garlic.
His hand took the chopping knife from mine
and I turned, cajoled by the riff
deep in his spirit’s beat.

The aroma afloat tapped into his feet.
As one, we crossed the kitchen floor.
As one, joy followed along. We shared
a paso moment, embraced the sizzle,
the quick, leaned back, stepped forward,
shifted bodies, twisted torsos,

drove elbows upwards and danced, danced,
danced our summer doble, spiced by
the waft, the tone poem flirting.
His face, his body captured the buzz.
His affinity with onion and garlic roux
always fast paced his emotion’s notes.

I still think about his bounce, acceleration
and high kicks released, not by chocolate,
oysters or figs but switched on by onions and
garlic cooking, sucking him into the kitchen,
whirling us as if Dervishes. Our feet
danced, danced, danced.

Some nights, we circled and circled,
not a question spoken, no reminders called.
Some nights, this is the best part,
our bodies heaved against each other.
We were not rich, not young but old enough
to know even summer can’t last.

Photo by Epitavi. 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: “Good Memory” is based on my real-life experience. The memory of it always brings on a smile in my mind and takes me to a happy place.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Donna Best writes to share how yesterday affects today, aspirations for tomorrow, the bravery of others and what we have in common across the globe. She has published in anthologies, newspapers, journals such as Better Than Starbucks and Woolgathering Review and been broadcast on local radio stations.

Deluge by Liza Wolff-Francis (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Deluge
by Liza Wolff-Francis

Florida fish joint, sound of waves,
forever-live-patio-music bursting beach songs,
bare feet in sand, the top of the ocean
fading at sunset, whiskey-barrel-beer.
Lina worked there then, with her carefully
curled hair, her embrace, her stories
about her son, her aching mother,
the way she danced serving food
table to table. That one night we were there
when it began to rain, we huddled,
storm-pounding, bartenders cheering
the falling water. Instead of waiting,
we decided to make our way back
to the hotel. People crouched under
the porch roof or the covered bar.
We moved into the storm like boats,
but soon became ocean absorbing
the bliss of rain, took down our umbrella,
stopped running, and let the water
move over our skin, through our hair,
ease into our open mouths, ears, eyes,
and even with all the people watching us,
we looked back at Lina dancing
and we looked at each other and began
to laugh at how our mistake became a glory
of being alive, a wonder of self as water,
as nature, as pieces of God and a movement
much larger than us with Earth and ocean,
and we jumped and splashed
like there was nothing else.

PHOTO: Dancing in the Rain (found image).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote parts of this poem at the beginning of the pandemic when remembering places I loved, but couldn’t visit. It was a bittersweet remembering, but also brought me joy and hope to think of this time, the beach, the rain, the energy, the sounds, and people being together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Liza Wolff-Francis is a poet and writer with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She was co-director for the 2014 Austin International Poetry Festival. Her writing has been widely anthologized and her work has most recently appeared in Wild Roof Journal, SLAB, and eMerge magazine. She has written reviews of poetry books that have been published on Adroit, Compulsive Reader, and LitPub. Her chapbook Language of Crossing was published by Swimming with Elephant Publications in 2015. She lives in North Carolina. Visit her at writeyourbutterfly.com. In October 2022, Liza was appointed poet laureate of Carboro, North Carolina, a post she will assume in January 2023.

How to dance the flamenco by Sue Mayfield Geiger (HOW TO Series)

How to dance the flamenco
by Sue Mayfield Geiger

Browse resale shops and buy a pair of castanets or spurge for the authentic ones, hand-painted; made in Spain.
If you can’t find a traje de gitana (flamenco outfit), a ruffly skirt will do.
A long-sleeved lacy top is appropriate, but not necessary.
Do not wear tap shoes; flamenco shoes are made with nails hammered into the heels and toes of the soles.
The headgear is important: A red carnation or decorative peineta (comb).
A pericón (Spanish fan).
Bold ruby-red lipstick.
Download Cajón (drum) and flamenco guitar music.
Start out with slow, concise movements, gradually moving your feet in a stomping motion until the music accelerates into 6/8 time. Wave your arms and hands like you are telling a story.
There are many YouTube videos to get you started. Or…

If you cannot gather the above, just drape yourself in wildly colored scarves, listen to a recording of guitarist Paco de Lucía as he strums a wicked gypsy melody, raise both arms high above your head and vigorously play your air castanets. Olé!

PHOTO: Flamenco dancer by Iatya Prunkova, used by permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: As a young girl, I saw my first performance of flamenco dancers on the Ed Sullivan Show viewed on a tiny (and fuzzy) black and white television. I was mesmerized and fascinated. Years later, while attending “Fiesta” in San Antonio, Texas, I wandered down a side street along the river and heard gypsy guitar music, tambourines, and a loud-clapping sound. After several jaunts through back alleys, down some concrete steps and onto an old cobblestone street, an “off-off-Fiesta” of sorts was taking place in an area only known to locals. A small audience was sitting on benches or draped across sidewalks as ten or so dancers dressed in vibrant colors were stomping and swaying to drums and guitars. My mind went back to that black and white performance I’d seen on television. I watched as they danced the flamenco with intensity, and their souls were on fire. So was mine. Later, I would learn that the flamenco dance originated in southern Spain centuries ago, but much of the true origin is debatable since many of the details are lost in history. The dance itself is mainly associated with the pain of love and love in all its aspects. Their songs often translate into something like, “I’ve seen a man live with more than a hundred knife wounds, and then I saw him die from a single dance.” After that night in San Antonio, I made it a point to see flamenco troupes whenever they were appearing on stage. So, during the pandemic, I danced my heart out, listening to Spanish guitars while smothered in the only makeshift costumes I could find.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sue Mayfield Geiger is a writer, singer, and model living on the Texas Gulf Coast. When not writing about home décor, fashion, or a new restaurant opening, she reads and writes poetry. Her literary publications include Grayson Books, RiverLit, Dos Gatos Press, The Binnacle (U of Maine), Of Burgers and Barrooms (Main Street Rag), Red Wolf Journal, Waco WordFest Anthology, Perfume River Poetry, THEMA, Silver Birch Press, and forthcoming in Odes and Elegies: Eco poetry from the Gulf Coast, and others. Visit her on Instagram @LovieSue and @Beyond70ish.

The Dance Arrives at Stevenson High School, poem by Virginia Chase Sutton (MY IMAGINARY SKILL Poetry and Prose Series)

The Dance Arrives at Stevenson High School
by Virginia Chase Sutton

My feet flash across the stage. I am twenty-one
and I love the tap-tap-tap-tap as in my head I
automatically repeat shuffle-ball-change,

shuffle-ball-change. I am dressed like a Vegas
showgirl–a sequined and feathered headdress
pinned into my upswept brown hair. My right hand

brushes the right shoulder of the woman ahead of me
as we dance. And our costume is spectacular!
A one-piece bathing-suit style, shimmering white

fabric layered in shivering black sequins, the
bosom encrusted with crystals. The entire back
is black with bands of sparkle. O, how I shine.

In full-dress make-up, my rouged lips and cheeks
are o-so-kissable. And my eyes with jeweled lashes
are visible even to the last row of the auditorium.

On my feet, classic black patent leather tap shoes
tied up with black ribbon. Underneath are silver
taps making the impossible possible. We slowly

move from stage left to stage right in a straight
line, three women ahead of me and seventeen
behind. The row heads behind heavy red velvet

curtains, music blaring, taps amplified. So practiced
are we that it is just a moment before we turn in unison,
head back out. Then we pause, tap-tap our way towards

the audience. We are doing the Rockettes proud. As one,
we bow, link arms and do high kicks as our big finish,
legs bending, thrust out, bending, repeating our way

into near breathlessness. We gleam, we are glory.
Unflappable we turn and leave the way we arrive,
the woman behind me skimming my translucent skin. Our

costumes are bright bites of breathtaking dazzle as we dissolve
into the wings. Curtains swish shut and applause roars. Opening
again, we each gracefully hold a sheaf of multi-colored roses.

We bow right, left, center. The crowd whistles, jumps to
their feet. I am collecting admirers, I know it, in this deluge
of sweetness, sparking rhinestones, the heat of heavy tap shoes.

PHOTO: Opening night of the Casino de Paris show at the Dunes, Las Vegas (1963).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Virginia Chase Sutton’s third book of poems, Of a Transient Nature, was just published by Knut House Press. Her second book of poems, What Brings You to Del Amo, won the Morse Poetry Prize and was published by the University Press of New England. Her first book of poems was Embellishments (Chatoyant). Her poems have won the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry at Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and they have appeared in the Paris Review, Ploughshares, Quarterly West, among other magazines, journals, and anthologies. She lives in Tempe, Arizona. She was once a very bad student at The Barbara Adkins School for Dance, located in a basement in the Chicago suburbs.

Dream Dancing, story by Linda McKenney (MY IMAGINARY SKILL Poetry and Prose Series)

Dream Dancing
by Linda McKenney

I’m best in the car. When using cruise control, I dance. My feet are tapping away to a jazzy piece of music. But put me in front of an audience, and I’m a failure. My mother was a dancer and used to tap dance in the kitchen while we were having breakfast. I pretended that she was annoying, but secretly I wished I could do that too.

I’ve auditioned for musical plays and, well it’s a dance shame. We line up in several rows and given dance steps. First step — not too bad. Second — I’m still in the game. By the third, and repeating them in sequence — I’m crashing into other dancers or they’re stepping on me.   I always place myself in the back row hoping the director will not see me. Unfortunately, he rotates rows and when I’m in front — I’m done.

Once, at a formal party, a coworker asked me to dance. This is another area, where I do not do so well. Following a confident, thinks-he-knows-what-he’s-doing partner is unnerving for me. When he told me he was going to dip me, I begged him not to. He ignored my plea, and proceded to drop me on the dance floor. Now I suffer from PTSD – Positively Terrified Shamed Dancer.

I still fantasize at times, about jumping up and dancing on a table in a restaurant, as if I’m in a Fred Astaire movie, but I’m sure I’d fall off. And at my age, jumping up on anything is unlikely.

So I will never be a Martha Graham or Ginger Rogers, but I will continue to groove to the music in whatever way I can. I’ll wobble onto the dance floor with my walker someday and wiggle my hips (they’ll still be in good shape because they’re titanium).

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Me at an early age just wishing I could walk, let alone dance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Linda McKenney is a Personal Life Coach, Motivational Speaker, and Writer, specializing in Mindful Living and Eating. Her creative nonfiction is published in Silver Birch Press, 101 Word Short Stories, The Survivor’s Review and Helen: A Literary Magazine.  She also has an alter ego at Susanbanthony.live. She continues to dream about dancing because, after all, life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

Every Day We Are Dancers, poem by Mitch Roberson

EVERY DAY WE ARE DANCERS
by Mitch Roberson

It begins with the lewd macarena
each of us performs in the shower,
then the modified twist we are hip to
with that ever-absorbent partner, the towel,

and on to the funky chicken of stepping into underwear,
the shimmy of stretching into hose.
There is no music, none that anyone
can hear, yet no one can escape the boogie.

Outside beneath the disco ball of the Sun
no one is a wallflower, not even the two lugs
in the crosswalk lugging a huge mirror,
one at either end pressing his cheek

into the cheek of his own reflection, arm
extended, hand clasping his own hand in a tango
more about control than passion, one couple
leading himself forward, the other slide-stepping

backwards across the intersection made double
by the infinite burden they shoulder together.
At the entrances of buildings even those afflicted
with two left feet find grace with a stranger

in a revolving door, where, regardless of gender,
we share a pause and glance to communicate
who will lead, who will follow,
close to each other but never quite touching.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mitch Roberson majored in English and political science at the University of Tennessee and holds an MFA from Vermont College.

SOURCE: Poetry (February 2003)

IMAGE: “Icarus,” by Henri Matisse (1944)

The Empty Dance Shoes, poem by Cornelius Eady

THE EMPTY DANCE SHOES
by Cornelius Eady

My friends,
As it has been proven in the laboratory,
An empty pair of dance shoes
Will sit on the floor like a wart
Until it is given a reason to move.

Those of us who study inertia
(Those of us covered with wild hair and sleep)
Can state this without fear:
The energy in a pair of shoes at rest
Is about the same as that of a clown

Knocked flat by a sandbag.
This you can tell your friends with certainty:
A clown, flat on his back,
Is a lot like an empty pair of
dancing shoes.

An empty pair of dancing shoes
Is also a lot like a leaf
Pressed in a book.
And now you know a simple truth:
A leaf pressed in, say, The Colossus
by Sylvia Plath,
Is no different from an empty pair of dance shoes

Even if those shoes are in the middle of the Stardust Ballroom
With all the lights on, and hot music shakes the windows
up and down the block.
This is the secret of inertia:
The shoes run on their own sense of the world.
They are in sympathy with the rock the kid skips
over the lake
After it settles to the mud.
Not with the ripples,
But with the rock.

A practical and personal application of inertia
Can be found in the question:
Whose Turn Is It
To Take Out The Garbage?
An empty pair of dance shoes
Is a lot like the answer to this question,
As well as book-length poems
Set in the Midwest.

To sum up:
An empty pair of dance shoes
Is a lot like the sand the 98-pound weakling
brushes from his cheeks
As the bully tows away his girlfriend.
Later,

When he spies the coupon at the back of the comic book,
He is about to act upon a different set of scientific principles.
He is ready to dance.

SOURCE: “The Empty Dance Shoes” appears in Cornelius Eady’s collection Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1997), available at Amazon.com.

IMAGE: “Dance” by John Crothers. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Poet and cofounder of Cave Canem, Cornelius Eady has published more than half a dozen volumes of poetry, among them Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist. Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems appeared in 2008.

American Smooth, poem by Rita Dove

AMERICAN SMOOTH
by Rita Dove

We were dancing—it must have
been a foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but
requiring restraint,
rise and fall, precise
execution as we moved
into the next song without
stopping, two chests heaving
above a seven-league
stride—such perfect agony,
one learns to smile through,
ecstatic mimicry
being the sine qua non
of American Smooth.
And because I was distracted
by the effort of
keeping my frame
(the leftward lean, head turned
just enough to gaze out
past your ear and always
smiling, smiling),
I didn’t notice
how still you’d become until
we had done it
(for two measures?
four?)—achieved flight,
that swift and serene
magnificence,
before the earth
remembered who we were
and brought us down.

SOURCE: “American Smooth” appears in Rita Dove’s collection American Smooth (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2004), available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rita Dove made her formal literary debut in 1980 with the poetry collection The Yellow House on the Corner, In works like the verse-novel Thomas and Beulah (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize, On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Sonata Mulattica (2009), Dove treats historical events with a personal touch. In addition to poetry, Dove has published works of fiction, including the short story collection Fifth Sunday (1990) and the novel Through the Ivory Gate (1992). Her play The Darker Face of the Earth (1996) was produced at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Dove is also an acclaimed lyricist, and has written lyrics for composers ranging from Tania León to John Williams. Dove was named US Poet Laureate in 1993, the youngest poet ever elected to the position. Dove has continued to play an important role in the reception of American poetry through her work as editor of the Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry (2011). She is currently Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Locomotion, Poem by Philip Bryant

LOCOMOTION
by Philip Bryant

I heard the
locomotion behind
the album by Monk my father
was playing.
The finely tuned
machine humming like
a top, purring like a kitten.
 
The first time I
saw the Santa Fe “Super Chief”
at Union Station in Chicago,
gleaming as a silver bullet
carrying the blue uniformed
conductor who gave a low whistle
and “All Aboard” for places as far away as Kansas,
Laredo, Tucson, Las Vegas, Palm Springs.
 
At that point
I knew it all had
something to do with jazz music.
The slow hiss of
the engine, the steam
let out by the jowls of the locomotive,
and the massive, muscular wheels turning
slowly counterclockwise to the engine’s beat
 
Come on Baby Do the Locomotion
Come on Baby Do the Locomotion With Me
 
heading out onto the open tracks,
that smoke-blown phrase repeated
over and over in my head through the years,
as miles of the real American landscape
began, slowly, to unfold.

Photo: ”Santa Fe Super Chief at Chicago’s Dearborn Station”  (closed in 1971) by Harold A. Edmonson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Music mentioned “Locomotive” by Philip Bryant: “Locomotive” byThelonius Monk – from his album Straight, No Chaster (1967) – listen to “Locomotive” here. “The Loco-Motion” (1962) written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King led to a dance craze of the same name — watch Little Eva perform “The Loco-Motion” at this link.