Poem of the Week, by Gregory Fraser
At the Degas Exhibit
- Gregory Fraser
The docent wends us to The Dance Class
and it all flits back: the studio downtown,
few bucks an hour, ragging off the finger
grease of toe-shoed cygnets, tutu-ed swans,
who glided hardwood blind to both
of me—spray of acne, high-top Keds.
I would clatter on the local after school
(weekends once the Christmas pageant neared),
my face, at every stop, floating outside
the window by my seat—a mask
tried on by stars in movie ads, commuters
cooling heels for later cars. Then Windex,
buff, till six, waving hello, farewell,
from glass to glass, plié to pointe—my hand
emitting squeaks, eliding dainty prints and streaks.
In my knapsack: comics, Catcher, lunch
untouched. And never once did I happen on
the courage even to speak to one of those
sugarplums of Rittenhouse, Society Hill.
Degas’s girls, our guide informs, practice
attitudes, inspected by their master
(one Jules Perrot) propped on his staff.
Note the Parisian mothers dabbed
on the wall in back. Yet I see only tights
that bear the stamp Massey Dance, hear
gripes about third position, giddy talk
of boys, and search the sides and corners
for my Old World counterpart—some
sponge-and-bucket kid from a ragged edge—
undersized, nearsighted, invisible to art.
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