I.
Perhaps I underestimate his importance.
After all, he was merely a crooked arm, a suit coat
dripping pressed shine, Old Spice and Wild Turkey
lending his soul a smell. He was just a flattened
and knowing hand at the small of my back, he was
nothing more than bended knees trying to match
his height to mine. The bartop was slick and glittering
with something, one leg of the jukebox propped up
too high on a cardboard square. Ask why
I remember that he never bothered to take off his
storm gray Stetson, that a single sweet thread
of sweat ran down the left side of his face, kissing
our clasped hands. I was 12, clacking knees, high-top
All Stars with flap tongues, a wad of grape bubble
plumping my cheek. He was a friend of my father’s,
his name wavering now between Willie and Earl.
He was grizzled and elegant, horrifying man-smell,
bowing slightly for permission to lead the woman
in me across a slice of pockmarked wooden floor.
Daddy grinned and hooted in the face of this crime.
II.
Slow dancing is the way sin looks when you hose
it down and set it upright, and all the time it is
the considering of further things, the music being
incidental, it might as well not be there. You can slow
dance to a dollop of chocolate, a wrinkled shred of silk,
the hot static of a child’s hair being brushed. Drag slow
on top of an angry lover’s silence, along the jittery
borders of a rain ring, on the cluttered sidewalk outside
wherever you are. You can dance to the arcing brows
of folks wondering why you have stopped to dance. Under
the thinnest pretense, you can demand touch. Without
considering consequence, you can sign your body over.
III.
By the time of that first slow dance, I had tasted
stormwater, head cheese, starch, sweet pickle juice.
In raw sanctified churches, I was swathed in crinoline
and dipped, hair first, into whatever wouldn’t kill me.
I knew how to fight for my life with a bottleneck.
I had discovered the liquid verb of my hips and had
gnawed the vinegary meat from the foot of a pig.
I could slip a thousand coins through the slot
of a juke, knowing my backbone would respond to
any song, any old keyed wail from a shattered someone.
I could exist on unclean things, slippery with fat,
and crush hugely pregnant roaches with the heel
of my hand. I dared slow-sputter four-syllable words.
Daddy taught me to be constantly astonishing.
IV.
The man who taught me to slow dance was simply
my father’s friend, who lifted me from a wobbling
stool when I nodded yes. He was that first gracious
sweep, flat laboring feet, slapped smile, awkward
realizing that a memory was coming to life in his arms.
The song? A woman was moaning so hard the record
skipped to save her. She was leaving, thinking
of leaving or had left, or someone had left her.
She had nothing left. My partner off-key spittled
every third word, flashing a gold incisor that made
me move closer to him. I wanted to get all of him
over with, to squeeze his scarecrow body through
and past me. I wanted us history. I knew then why
it is always the woman who dances backwards,
numbing her short spine, circling the man’s neck
with both arms. She is scrambling for a glimpse
of where she’s been, the yesterday she had before
he gets hard and confuses hallelujah with her name.