Poetry Magazine, Michael Atkins, March 2000

Michael Atkins

USA

New Orleans, 1975

New Orleans, 1975
The bartender watches the dancer move toward the stage;
He has faithfully memorized her,
Red hair pulled back in a girlish ponytail,
Breasts more Mary Pickford than Marilyn Monroe,
The slightly darker, curly hair at her center;
She is the only dancer he watches every night,
Watches and does not breathe.

She takes no notice of the men seated
Around the stage, nor does she avoid their eyes,
But gazes into the middle distance,
The interior of concentration.
The bartender waits, and time waits,
Breathless, for her to dance.

Now she begins to move,
Her steps careful and precise,
As if these men had to come to see a ballet;
In her own time she will tease, tantalize,
Arouse, convince the men she dances for them.

Now the movement of her body become faster,
The rhythm of the dance more insistent,
The beat of her body against the music
Harder and harder, her eyes never acknowledging an audience;
The bartender notices, as he notices every night,
The moment in the dance when her nipples become hard,
Just before she hurls herself to the floor,

Palms flat against the stage, back arched,
Then lifts herself in a long, sultry writhe,
Jerking the men’s heads as she moves,
Pulls their minds like a child’s wagon on a rope
As she retreats to center stage,
Stops.

She begins a spin. The bartender knows
She is the only dancer in the Quarter
Who would do this quirky thing, become
A nude figurine on a music box wound too tight,
Whose only thought is to whirl and whirl and whirl
As if to spin herself out of time.

A final turn and she is gone.
The bartender wipes the counter,
Eyes still fixed on the dancer,
Wondering whether he is too old or
She is too young, watching her until she leaves the stage
And he can turn away to other tasks.

The Voices

The voices.
I am trying to remember the sound of the voices.
I hear them
Like a radio in the next room,
The meaning of the words just out of reach.

In my mind, a picture with one of the voices:
I am walking down a street in New Orleans.
We have gotten out of the street car,
The girl with bond hair and I,
The girl and I walking slowly through the Quarter.

One of the voices is hers,
The girl with the blond hair.
Her voice is a knife,
I leave her standing in front of an oyster bar,
Walk away with two men’s voices,

One voice is gay,
Leaves us so it won’t be bored,
Leaves our two remaining dwindling voices
To mix with the street,
Women who were somehow men,

Dancers without voices
An open café where an old black man played a trumpet
The trumpet had a voice
I guess it was his voice too
The old black man’s, I mean,

Like jazz or any other music can draw and quarter you
If it hits you at that moment
When another voice has left you on the street corner
And of course all those voices later in time
They are mixed up in this too

Like a radio in the next room
The meaning still just out of reach
The picture just around the corner
All the voices you have left on street corners
Forever just out of reach.

Heritage
Another Poem For LaClaire

I watch you dive into the swimming pool,
Nut brown body knifing seemlessly into blue water,
Upside down between blond-haired, blue-eyed friends,
As if you meant to stand on your head
On the bottom of the pool; I consider who you are,

As you will surely consider when you are older,
Cherokee on one side, Blackfoot on the other,
The mish-mash of Europe thrown in for confusion,
Or perhaps for the amusement of some naughty set of sprites,
Dark little girl with the light French name;

I received none of this heritage in my appearance,
So obvious in my grandmother, daughter, aunts and uncles;
Brits and Irishmen dominate the Indian
In my history; red hair and blue eyes
Keep the coverlet on the mixed bed of my ancestry.

But looking at you my child,
Dark hair glistening wet as
Your head breaks the surface of the water,
Arms reaching toward the sky,
History is not an abstraction for me.