Hi Bunny,
yeh, I think you've caught it here. The observation's well paced and feels
authentic. It's both distanced and involved (in the ways I feel someone
who's there and seeing the scene would see everything in one moment, and
only one or two things in the next moment, and then almost everything
again).
Once or twice when I read it I find myself wondering if the person in the
black dress is the same woman/girl as the one at the start of the poem. Then
I think "Of course it is!" Then I start to wonder if it is again...
But if you see that as an issue I guess it can be easily fixed without
altering the flow and the rhythm of the piece.
I like it.
And the title! Wow! Is that the name of the place? It sounds so suggestive!
(Yet so perfunctory as well!). It's brill!
Bob


>From: Bunny Goodjohn <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: sub: Dancing at Madam Organs
>Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 19:45:33 -0400
>
>Hello everyone,
>
>I used to be active on this list but somehow got out of the loop. I know it
>is bad form to submit without critting, but I fully intend to spend my
>entire Sunday with virtual pen in hand! Any help you can give me on this
>one
>would be well received. Cheers.
>
>Dancing at Madam Organs
>
>She dances for him at the bar,
>smooth gleam of breasts
>symmetric through the neckline
>of her dress, slim and laughing,
>not at him but at the whole damn world.
>Her dance, a carnival, a fiesta
>launched on cheap red wine.
>Her body so fine, it makes the other men
>ache for just one night, or an hour
>or a moment when they might touch
>their hips to hers.
>And the cinnamon boy dances too,
>his lean thighs and pelvis grind,
>palms sway, stroking the outline
>of the girl’s smoke-haze aura.
>Behind them, the sax player,
>all gold and shine charms
>his way through the bar,
>trailing notes so sweet
>they could sugar your heart,
>and Camille grinds out Marley,
>stretching the words
>til they fall to the floor, a lament
>to a woman’s tears, and the girl
>in the black dress dances closer
>to the cinnamon boy, her hips
>graze his just long enough to feel
>the need, and the dance is no longer
>a dance, but a prelude to something else.
>She knows he just wants to get his hands
>on the smooth gleam, and the throb of the sax
>through her breastbone, the way
>the boy’s slides the air through his fingers
>makes her need the smooth gleam too.
>
>
>
>Bunny
>"Sometimes a poem about a fish is just that - a poem about a fish."






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