They could have danced straight out
of a Brueghel painting into our basement,
partially finished in fake wood paneling
and a dropped ceiling that still left
some plumbing exposed—
my mother and her mother,
four heart attacks and two open-heart surgeries
between them, breathing heavily,
but still going, arms and hands dipping
and rising, their feet skipping and hopping,
as if a speeded-up polka was a form of time
travel that could bring back the years
before their lives went wrong,
before my grandmother married a man
who beat them every Saturday, drunk
and angry about a life going nowhere,
dead years now, but still part of the history
of their panting, heaving bodies,
the necessity of love driving them faster
and faster as we clapped, fearful
one of them would die right there and then
inside our family circle—but no one
could stop them and, honestly,
no one really wanted to, the more all of us
playfully yelled stop, the more they danced,
mother and daughter,
the music upon them as they whirled
round and round and round
like the hands of a clock in a cartoon,
time spinning out of control.
Robert Cording has published ten books, the most recent of which is In the Unwalled City. A book of new and selected poems is forthcoming from Slant in 2025. Poems have appeared in publications such as The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, The Common, AGNI, The Sun, and the Pushcart Prize anthologies of 2022 and 2025.
