It don't mean a thing/ If it ain't got that swing . . .

A swing lesson

The step to an east coast swing dace is actually a six beat count. If you know anything about music you would denote the step as "trip-pe-let, trip-pe-let, eight-note" or, if you dance swing, you know the step as "trip-ple-step, trip-ple-step, rock-step"

Swing dancing is kind of like you because it's fun and exhausting. Swing dancing is kind of like you because it refuses to fit into a four beat count. Swing dancing is kind of like you because it likes to screw with music students.

You can position yourself in relation to your partner in a variety of ways in swing dancing. One is "closed position":  a ballroom like hold, chests close, the lead's hand on the follow's shoulder blade, the follow's hand on the leads shoulder. The other two hands should be clasped loosely between the two bodies. Many swing instructors will describe this as a "heart" shape.

Swing dancing is kind of like you because every time I think I get a hold of it, I realize I've only scratched the surface. Swing dancing is kind of like you because there are cute, swirly skirts involved. Swing dancing is kind of like you because every person I dance with would describe you in a different way.

While east coast swing is a six beat count, lindy hop and the charleston, both iterations of swing, dance on an eight beat count. West coast swing is another six count but derives from lindy hop. You can dance to most social dancing music with just east coast as long as you don't mind too hard being on the third beat of every other measure.

Swing dancing isn't like you because you're a person, not a dance. You have likes, and dislikes, and a personality and a body. Swing dancing isn't like you because I can take lessons in swing dancing. I can put it into musical counts and study it on a paper. You're both more real and more ethereal than swing dancing. You're more beautiful and more falible.  The nights I spend dreaming about swing dancing, I don't wake up feeling vaguely lost and lonely.

Mythos of a road trip

Picture old world gods crammed with their whole life’s

possessions in a shabby Subaru

--three of them--the number of divinity.

They pass around a half eaten bag of

potato chips, like fate’s thread, the driver,

the navigator and one slumped against

a passenger side window, not sleeping,

Just resting her eyes. They are lovers, or

friends, or sisters, or all three. It matters

very little here in this parthenon.

What matters is the love, the closest the

gods would ever need to come to worship.

The moon slants through the driver's side window

and casts a blue shadow across the car.

The road is two parallel lines, meeting

at the infinity of the horizon

and every single rest stop they pass serves

as their own personal Mount Olympus.

There are neon lights flashing like lightning

and semi-trucks rolling like thunder. Each

new place filled with silver plated idols,

proclaiming the pilgrim’s forever

devotion to this place and this place only.

Before the girls leave the asylum of

the Subaru, one of them reapplies

her lipstick in the rear-view mirror, lines like

prayers she has said so many times she has

stopped hearing the words and only knows the

most primal sounds in the prayer. The most primal

Shapes in the tube of lipstick. The car is

filled with carboard french fry holders and used

up coffee cups, it is the place where rest stop

food goes to die, the cupholders in a

permanent state of purgatory,

the bottles of naked juice mourned by their

last drops solidifying into green

and orange mush along the bare edges

of clear bottle. And still spurred ever onward

by flaming gasoline and buzzing caffeine,

the chariot that is the subaru

flies at the horizon. It’s brights beating

the darkness back. Driven by old world gods.

--done in pentameter-ish

Femme as Weapon

(revison)

Picture a scene:
Two young women prepare to go out for an evening.
One sharpens her lips with the blood red whetstone of her lipstick
The other restraining straps of her black sandal armor.
The mirror watches the way one whips a scarf over her shoulder and bats her eyelashes
Like a master of a blade practicing drills before battle.
One lays out four pairs of earrings on the table, weighing each with merrits, deliberately and methodically, the other weighing in over her her shoulder, in between styles of scarf tying.
The scarf tied, the hair is next to move, one of the most vital allies in the night to come.
Out come a turtle shell clip, a hair tie, and an armada of bobby pins,
All ready and willing to assist the hair with a complicated up-do maneuver.
The women pray to the goddess of war, Aphrodite, with their rouged lips and their
Glittery eyelashes. They pray for victory.

Body series 4:

My back
Is the American midwest
Broad, smooth and featureless
You can get on the road at the base of my skull and see my spine,
The gentle curve of it reaching all the way down to my tailbone
Three days drive from here, and still nothing but silky corn and soybeans.

Body Series 3:

My biceps
Are curved wire
Studded plate mail
Chain mail wrapped around aluminium alloy bone.
I have titanium shoulders and copper triceps.
Heavy metals in my thighs and stone around my ankles.

Last Saturday I saw a red-tailed hawk in the sky
wings spread, floating upwards.
I knew my steel biceps would never float that light.

Body series 2:

My hands

Are as rough as the bark of the vines I pulled from the trees and bushes.

Oriental bittersweet, smothering trees and stifling the forest.

Hundreds and hundreds of pounds pulling the enormous cottonwoods and oaks to the ground.

Mighty giants, deep grooved bark and roots blanketed with leaves of years past,

Brought slowly and painfully down to the earth.

Body series 1:

My feet

Are as cracked and uneven as the dirt road I walked down at sunrise

One day in early June. That morning

The gravel rose up to meet my skin as the sun rose up to meet the day

The chilled morning air whisped, hello, to my skin through my thin t-shirt

And I wondered for a second if I am the only living human left on this empty planet

The grass nods along as I wonder, and the trees warm their thick green leaves

Against the cold morning, rubbing them together for meager warmth.