“Just between us, she could have been great”

                                                  – George Balanchine
I was a little boy with his eye

        in the keyhole, training: Vaganova, Karsavina, Gerdt

pas de trois    pink ribbon    battement

        each one a different measure of sound

unraveling movement        of a new world logic.
The body is an instrument        I use

        what they are—like to go under

the skirt        slight        sniff of perfume:

        we do not train the pussy

cat—she teaches us                gestures
in time        and we test        and taste;

a pinch of salt, a bit of sugar

culinary complements:

                           Q: Wonderful borscht

                           how do you do it?
A: I feed from the acid in her thigh

             a clean line   moving

                                      forward        somehow

elegant plié    a swung hip

                                           split
second         compressed

        into one tiny capsule: little lover, adventuress

long-limbed colt, firebird—a variety of bodies

        cut free. The real world is not here. It is

a conduit of force, weightlessly musing
on his shoulder; chest high, back straight

        feet arched. We do not see what we do not

see: obsessive tendus        five-minute

Coca-Cola developé    musical tuning in the pit
but a raised curtain:                              Mr. B

        trapped in the wings of my own demonic furor

let loose upon the harshest critics:          at first

‘ah, it’s wonderful’ and then

                                      ‘oh, I don’t …
And then it is over. And no more.