Fishbowl Waltz
by Susan Eyre Coppock
Dancing school 1954. A weekly production put on by all attendees. Children’s strained smiles like drying bivalve shells, grey clams looking for water as they gather in the center, paired up. Party dresses crinkling – taffeta, silk, organdy. Girls smooth their skirts. Boys pat determined cowlicks. Mothers sit primly on wooden benches at the side, some ambitious octopuses suctioning along (see Jenny’s brocade dress? my new Buick convertible? who’s got more? who, I ask you?), tentacles like clock arms, winding ahead, suckers upright. Mr. Chalieff, wan dancing master on tiptoe, swanning by in navy suit and tie, dabbing his moist upper lip and squid eyes, scanning for wallflowers (myself among them) draped against the white wall like sea stars, our eyes on the ceiling pleading, anywhere but here, God. Anywhere. Mr. Chalieff bowing, holding out his graceful arms – May I, Mademoiselle? I rise, hold out my arms, and we dip and rise, dip and rise, two sea nettle bells bending. One, two, three; one, two, three.
Susan Eyre Coppock is a retired French teacher. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nixes Mate, Common Ground Review, museum of americana, Paterson Literary Review, Free State Review, and elsewhere. Her poem ‘Other Falls’ was a semi-finalist in the Orchard Street Press 2024 poetry contest where it appeared with other winning poems in their journal Quiet Diamonds.