Dance by Merrill Cole

The eyes of these dancers -
queerly askew of the order
of rhythm the rest of the body obeys -
uncoiling
averse to the limbs’ lightest cue

Toward the coincident audience
the others
the contrary eyes also followers
of imitation’s most static law
dilated

Though turning
each fixed on another still black circle
just as empty

About which
this ornate facsimile of life
gestures and spins 
unseen
MERILL COLE’s poems have appeared in such venues as Denver Quarterly, Cutbank Literary Review, The Main Street Rag, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. A professor at Western Illinois University, he is the author of The Other Orpheus: A Poetics of Modern Homosexuality. He has translated the Weimar-era Berlin naked dancing magnum opus, Dances of Vice, Horror, and Ecstasy. More recently, he co-edited and co-translated the 2021 Quertext: An Anthology of Queer Voices from German-Speaking Europe.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
to the dancers
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