Rhett Talley: ‘The Dancer’

The Dancer

Her vulnerability mesmerises like a potion.
She wears her skin tight and nude as a leopard.
Her face is a fortress of indifference.
A man and woman bred well: her form is perfected.
Our eyes orbit her sun hips solemn as planets.
Praxiteles weeps: He knew one day she would come.
Thirteen billion years amassed in her writhing hourglass
—Oh man she rolls and crashes
Like big waves in moonlight
And shakes it to aching drums!
Her pheromones magnetise our hominid fingertips.
Our charged cells deny her inconceivable contempt.
Look! The seconds are obliterated in a blur of musk.
The ignited watchers combust
Beyond her gaze.

Rhett Talley