Limbo Dancing
Yesterday I went limbo dancing
in the bedroom mirror.
Lower and lower I danced
until I fell into the mirror
and became my reflection.
Rough were the waters.
I know how to swim, but
I thought I would drown,
except the light was too shallow
and my feet touched bottom
when I let down my wheels.
I swam on and in
looking for a deserted island
on which to build
my idle, sandcastle dreams.
Two people said they saw
my reflection swimming,
a goldfish in a silver space.
They said I stared back at them
with circles of longing
ringing my eyes, but I laughed
when they said they had seen me,
for when I looked in the mirror
that reflected the mirror,
I saw myself limbo dancing,
stranded between
heaven and hell
in a dance hall called Virus
where I drank Corona.
Whose eyes watch me now
as my video goes viral
and I twist and I dance
in a fantasy land
filled with sweet nothings.
I find the fourth stanza (about the goldfish in the silver space) pivotal for the poem and interesting. The word and the image of the goldfish are startling and strange. As precious metals, gold and silver are almost at odds with one another. They clash when worn together and perhaps that is why the stanza stands out from the rest.
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Surrealism, Jane, and pure fantasy. So much fun to write. I could have been living on a new planet, watching the meniscus on my Mexican Corona beer. Thanks for being here, in all senses.
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Finally, someone who understands the alternative meaning of meniscus!
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Oy, Jane! You’re talking to someone who had his knee cartilage manipulated after a series of rugby injuries some 60 years ago. I bent the bars of the hospital to which I was clinging when they first tired! Meniscus, indeed. Luvya!
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