Tap Shoe Memento Mori
A vision of Carol Falkowitz, distinguished tap dancer
and colorful grandmother.
Violent slaps ring
off the dining room table’s
finished mahogany.
She matches the metal licks
to the bold
in her hips,
and from it a rhythmic clink resurrects
into tune. Eyes sewn
shut; she lets the silver pulse
groove her.
Her cracked skin
and kinked frame feeling
for the days of stages and loud light—
an audience of hazy grins
and grabby eyes watch her
Cincinnati,
Cincinnati
ball-change.
Then, from the crimson-rimmed
hollow that is her mouth,
they’ll see, atop
her bubblegummed-tongue, rests
a knotted cherry stem.
Nodding in acceptance
of her lost dew, a
dead peachiness,
she’ll insist:
When I croak—
bury me with nothing but
metal slabs on my feet and a
teacup full of cherries
Rachel Beneway is in the midst of her junior year at SUNY Fredonia where she studies English education and creative writing. When she manages to break away from the lives of fictional characters, she likes to spend her summers hiking up mountains and winters skiing down them. In a past life she was definitely best friends with Scout Finch. This is Rachel’s first publication.
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