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enjoy this Kyle Hemmings writing in the free Down in the Dirt Tax Day 2011 PDF file chapbook Cat People				You can also order this as a 2011 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book Cat People

Solitary Dancers

Kyle Hemmings

    Kat’s childhood was a lost weekend inside a room of Teddy Bear eyes. Objects floated; shadows fell face first. Still there is today and a forbidden love for acting out. No barre, center of floor, teacher’s voice, a constant ringing in the ears, Sad Tuesday’s leftover. The ankle is aligned with one’s favorite dark cloud. Not a waltz, he’d say. His hands are yellow-stained, bulging with knots and veins, his voice, a low-flying crane over White Russia, the impossibility of the glide. Years later, she imagines his sister, once light on her feet, practicing her Cabrioles in a Siberian prison, footfalls on the wind, a slap against brick. If only one could perform a jump, a Brisé from fifth position to endless swirling void. At least, there’d be no more complaints of fallen arches.

    What Kat learns: no matter the composer or choreographer, life is about balance on one foot. Her father is always somewhere else, marking time with strippers. His balance, she pronounces as deviant. She learns to fly through the air, the weight of a swan’s reflection. Jumping room to room, she becomes a window for others, their flighty attention span, their self-denials before mirrors. They conceal a fear of heights. She auditions for fat-lipped men in cheap suits and makes them pay for her sprains, her bruises. Leaping through time, growing older yet lighter, she lands on the same foot she starts with. With strangers wearing masks, she speaks of a paper Mache firebird still sitting in her room. Can you hear her, she asks each one. The teacher’s voice returns, hovers over her nude body, foot wrapped around a lover’s ankle, his breaths on the wind. Fondu, relevé, fondu. Down, up, down. Not a waltz step. Not a pas de valse. Not in this life. The dancer in a degagé. Her lovers die a white death, dreaming of air.

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