Designed for Flight: Poems

At the Degas Exhibit

9 At the Degas Exhibit The docent wends us to The Dance Class and it all flits back: the studio downtown, few bucks an hour, ragging off the finger grease of toe-shoed cygnets, tutu-ed swans, who glided hardwood blind to both of me—spray of acne, high-top Keds. I would clatter on the local after school (weekends once the Christmas pageant neared), my face, at every stop, floating outside the window by my seat—a mask tried on by stars in movie ads, commuters cooling heels for later cars. Then Windex, buff, till six, waving hello, farewell, from glass to glass, plié to pointe—my hand emitting squeaks, eliding dainty prints and streaks. In my knapsack: comics, Catcher, lunch untouched. And never once did I happen on the courage even to speak to one of those sugarplums of Rittenhouse, Society Hill. Degas’s girls, our guide informs, practice attitudes, inspected by their master (one Jules Perrot) propped on his staff. Note the Parisian mothers dabbed on the wall in back. Yet I see only tights 10 that bear the stamp Massey Dance, hear gripes about third position, giddy talk of boys, and search the sides and corners for my Old World counterpart—some sponge-and-bucket kid from a ragged edge— undersized, nearsighted, invisible to art. ...