Kitchen Waltz with Kitty Wells, Moon, and Boys
____________________________________

The blinds are up, the dusty screens loose and you're working
On the dishes real slow and I am not helping. It's 9 pm, hot sticky
Michigan summer night, the lake out there, humming emptiness.
The boys play StarCraft online, hovered over the terminal
Stuck to cheap chairs, ones you brought home from Employee Sales.

It's September and still summer and still hot. We are still
In love in a kind of jagged way. I don't always love this life.
I'm still dreaming. You ask about my time. I go to the sink

Pull your hands from the dismal water, you into my arms. You
Are the better dancer from the waist up. I'm superior from the hips
To the floor. And then you put on the music. And the moon comes over
The steel sink. And the kids come in to see why. And you open
Another bottle of cheap Foxhorn chardonnay, which
We have convinced ourselves is golden good.

The boys don't dance they peck, chicken beaks. I dance no sex, family.
Just Fun Mom Dance Moves. I promise everything good for the boys
With my body, my smile, my barefeet. But they shrink, they back out.
They can't stand to see it, me and you, swinging, losing our rhythm.

The boys are back at their brilliant box, making finger explosions
In that weird blue light, and the dad and I move into our boxes
And balances. We took a ballroom class once. We know the words
To all of Wells. We know how to stage the moonlight, and move
Like any small dancing vague family.

 

 

From The Boys I Borrow by Heather Sellers, 2007

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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