The Dance Lesson: Beth Kephart Poem

You will never be;

you won’t.

Your spine, your face, your hips
are implicated, wrong.
Your balance, meanwhile, is an obstruction to mine
and cricked to a shim.
You have snaggled you have shammed you have embargoed beauty.
You have yelped the discontinuous, and why
would you ever
(answer this)
heel the music
into breaking its own heart?

It was your suspicion of tension
that failed you.
It was your wanting
too much
that forced
the first elision.
The second
erupted from despair.

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