Rice: Poems

The Savoy, 1926

166 The Savoy, 1926 This was indeed one of the first places where women couples danced together and danced wickedly . . . —anonymous bystander Enter The Palais de Danse The greatest floor in the world Harlem’s Lenox Avenue The whole block a floor Only Saturday night Only Sunday After Abyssinian Baptist ceased Its own rocking And let the saints go change into doggin’ clothes 75 cents would get you in The rest of what you saw Would keep you Enter Marble staircases Glass chandeliers Orange and blue the scheme Two hundred feet long Fifty feet wide The floor hummingbird maple Nailed down Night after night Only Saturdays Only Sundays 167 With taps and polished high up heels Hammering the hummingbird hard Music just as sweet as August ham Enter Now playing The Savoy Bearcats and the Royal Flush Orchestra Hot Lips Page and Louis Armstrong Duke Ellington Chick Webb Enter Anybody regular Collard green pot washers And Model T mechanics Negrotarians from downtown And oh yes businessmen Alice Faye Greta Garbo And them two brown girl regulars Name of Moss and Maggie One a bird’s eye pumpkin maple The other a high yellaw mustard seed Always holding each other a spot in the come-in line Lana Turner The Roosevelts A Prince of Wales Some millionaire A playboy A madam The place Savoy 168 And over there in the Cat’s corner Them 2 brown sweet-eyed regular ones Ain’t tryin’ to fool nobody Moss and Maggie Two on-each-other girls Humming a hole in the maple Jagging the jig While they knit a eye-lit stitch in each other Never touching But daring that While they wait right there at the Cat’s Invisible rope cheering him on He so draped down Jookin’ in his spotlight place A race man A sportin’ life The rug cuttin’ center was Cat’s corner The spotlight spot Only the king of the floor danced there Until he was navy blue in the knees (Sail on Cat man) and when he finally wear down he takes his hanky out and surrenders but only to himself then strolls away with a hiccup walk to fetch him some cold cat juice nobody ever takes over his corner cause they say the floor right then and there is always too hot for anyone to follow Nobody but them two regulars Who never find nothin’ too hot 169 Who broke the mold Then glued it back Here they come again Two who drive all day and night Two who been waiting for him To go on his evening stroll Been waiting for him to thirst up Like only he can And then go King-winking around Just like they been minute by minute Wishing he would There he go his back is turned And he is steady peeping the crows Through his likkers They scoot right over To his still warm dancing board And Negrotarians and ambassadors can’t believe it But Chick Daddy shouts out the go-ahead “Work it girls, work it!” Now just look at ’em Jumpin’ up and skylarkin’ all around Following their kitchen made hair They gone back home somewhere On a closed eye highway 95 south Free nappy but moving wicked And saucer throwing winks back across At each other From one side of the Cat’s corner To the other “Awww you cookin’ now Punkin’” 170 One always says to the other Don’t matter which one it is They are both Lindy Hoppers stomping Scrounching the music back Into the maple leaves on the floor Who else would dare take his place Right there in the aboriginal home of the Happy feet Gliding and whirling And throwing the other up past the air And tucking their fingers Into poking out Hottentot backsides And catching each other And forgetting hundreds more are around And the music don’t stop And ain’t nobody staring Cause don’t nobody care who is catching who This is the home of happy feet And foots don’t have no gender This is the greatest dance floor in the world And these are the Regulars The Palais de Danse A dancing place Where Moss and Maggie Two brown waitressing girls Just up from Arkansas Have poled out now But pretty soon Are fanning dress tails and curtsying Pushing...