—After Dance Marathon (1934), Philip Evergood

Come on darling you can’t fall over now. Not after forty-nine damn days. Not when there’s only a few hoofers still standing. If we can keep our knees off the floor for just a bit longer, we got us a chance to win that thousand bucks, maybe more.

Lemme rest my head on your shoulder, and you press up against me. That way we’ll make it past them folks sitting fat and easy behind the rail. Used to hate the staring and the whispering. Don’t care no more.

Straighten up, the floor man’s moving in. I always know when he’s coming on account of that stinking cigar. Word is he’s a skirt chaser. For sure he’s been grinning at me so hard his eyes just about disappear.

Heard a scout’s come from Hollywood. Can’t you just see us swanking around that movie town—you driving a snazzy convertible and me in white fur, sporting a diamond big as a marble shooter.

alley doorway
the flicker of yes
in a smile

Publisher’s Note:

Dance Marathon, an oil-on-canvas painting by North American artist Philip Evergood (1901–1973), resides at the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin. Visit Artnet online for more information about the artist, including a gallery of hundreds of his works.

Kathryn J. Stevens

worked in marketing communications with IBM and before that with one of the divisions of The State University of New York at Albany. Her poems have been published in a variety of online and print venues, including Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Ribbons, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, The Heron’s Nest, and KYSO Flash. She currently lives with her husband and a rather cantankerous cat in Cary, North Carolina.