jumpinjumpoutjumpsidetosidejumponjumpinjumpout: a jumprope song
- jumpinjumpoutjumpsidetosidejumponjumpinjumpout:a jumprope song
when deedee jumps double-dutch the whole ground shakes like she got bass in her feet from a box chevy's trunk her lean brown legs, scar-less and cocoa-buttered are pushed into size ten's, pushed into white girl's, worn down at the soles, she got legs bowed like wishbones centered tween the tight white lips of the double-dutchess' mouth fast talking liquor bottle glass, circulating looks from people who want this parking space.
when deedee jumps double-dutch have to sing the whole song twice like the church choir. cement curb lined with rolling eye girls waiting for their turn four arms rotating in absolute circles back and forth rocking, jiggling mosquito bit breasts old women sitting lopsided on porches [End Page 61] gnaw dreams into gums, wishing they could jump like that, like deedee who loosens fingerprints and liquored breath all day saturday into midnight when rope has turned to sky and her feet, sore from jumping into and out of have began to whisper sunday morning prayers
after we stand in doorways bellies full from dinner and faces scrubbed clean, still seeing the click-snap of clothesline ropes near tops of trees, deedee the double-dutch queen traces circular outlines of street-light with her feet, one in front of the other, dragging her braided jump-rope down the street to get muddied in rainbow oil puddles like our own bare jumping feet.
Keli Stewart is a mother, performance artist, and doctoral student of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia College in 2002. Her current work, a performance piece, “House of Forks and Knives,” received the Douglas Turner Ward/Alice Childress Scriptwriting Prize.
