First workshop of the semester...

My new class makes me miss my New School cohorts. But it always takes me a bit to warm up/too long to let go, so I am going to try diligently (not, admittedly, my forte) to be patient and nice and not too shy in class. There are some sharp kids in there, great readers and interesting writers, which will be excellent.

Anyway, this was the first piece of mine workshopped. It wasn't intentionally an ekiphrasis. Degas came in when I was searching for a ballet with a rape scene and that is what Google got me.

Stealing from the Thrift Store

The two-inch tall thrift shop music box

ballerina looked like a whore I worked

the old NW 3rd and Ankeny block with

my first few weeks in town, before I got

clean, before I stopped shaking enough

to find God in picking locks and leaving

prayer books in top dresser drawers in

place of Benjamins and heirloom peridots,

unburdening the owners of empty idols,

unleashing harnesses of familial history.

Missing her right Russian-third-position

raised arm, her face worn like some

little girl wanted luck before each recital

and must have needed it, or must have

danced daily, daily, for years; her little

tulle tutu dirty, torn, showing where

the plastic pink leotard met the plastic

peach thigh. She tried to twirl, the spring

that held her toes together slightly bent,

her two inch frame becoming more and

more like us women and wannabe

women of NW 3rd and Ankeny, ready

to celebrate a Halloween any day we

found enough coal or petals to paint

our faces, dancing any time we were

not pressed with our backs against

bricks or stained by-the-hour motel

room sheets, the queen of us whores

needing no orchestra to raise herself

to relevé on black and calloused balls

of her feet, a dull emergency exit sign

shining red on her worn face, teasing

the frizz of the hair not kept in the bun,

matted at the crown of her head as she

took to the gutter-stage for a nightly

performance, the rat playing the swan,

gyrating and seizing instead of sashaying

and pirouetting, until a businessman,

bored, passed by, wanting to recreate

Degas' The Interior and take our deranged

ballerina against a wall or between stained

by-the-hour motel room sheets. I took all

two inches home in my pocket, leaving

the music locked in another compartment

of the box for someone who loved

the symphony but not the ballet;

needing the second hand charm

between my thumb and forefinger,

an icon to keep my hands idle.