Poetry
The Dancer's Daughter
The dancer is expecting and she hopes
her fourteen-year-old daughter will approve.
The young girl anticipates the baby
as you would a root canal, knowing some
poignant, sizzling nerve will disappear,
and with it childhood yanked twice from the womb.
Her mother might pirouette about this,
and bulk-throb, and daughter is lead-footed,
an acrobat. Badly choreographed,
this new flourish is a sheer betrayal,
the second violin leaping in front
in the third movement, tripping her when all
she wanted was backbeat, pause for effect.
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