by Suzanne Lummis
– Created for and performed by Donna Sternberg Dancers
Or call them pumps, as in—
pump yourself up by your shoes and
tie your own laces, Poor Cat. Try
to fit in. Six and a half—Tsk!—more
like six, too little, too narrow, a day
late and a buck short. Dance me
to the end of love said Leonard
Cohen Kat to Cat Cinderella. But hers fit.
Fit that in your pipe and smoke said
Somebody to Somebody Else. Pink.
Pink and sleek, sleek like a,
like a… Fill in the blank. The tall
and slender, young and lovely shoes
that won’t go walking… Get fit said Jane
Cat Ballou, back then, in the 80s, when
she made fitness cool. But these don’t.
Fit. Me. Sorry this poem’s so trite—
tight and unfitting. It’s not about Loss
not about Solace, not about nothing—
well, yes, about Nothing. Gotta make
somethin’ from nothin’. It’s a cool hand,
nothin’, said Cool Hand Cat. Blown Money
blow smoke. Dice, roll me a chance. Lemons
can turn lemonade pink. Imagine. Think.
Mood Indigo Pink: an alley, a winding,
sliding, unhungry cat—not hungry ’cause
it knows where to look, how to see
through the dark, fill in the blank.
Cat on a Fence. Fitting or not, shoeless
or shoed, rose or rosé, barefoot
if that’s how it goes. To the end
of love and then back, then out
the back door—it’s dark. Sweet!
La nuit, night, noir, the backside
of pink. See, Chat Noir, it all—
the shoe, the smoke, sense
and nonsense, pink, even French—
fits
in the dance.
— from Juniper Volume 1, Issue 3