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skate photo

October 24, 2022

skate

Jill Kitchen

how many words are there for curl, for curve, for circle,
for the blur of motion on wheels? for wings desperate to unfurl?
how you spin you spin you spin like that wheel in sleeping beauty
how you spindle me out of myself and even further into becoming
how your whir is a language made of movement made of my legs
tracing eights like when i was 10 in that old barn paved into
a garage with rough rocky cement i turned on the boom box
the smell of hay and dust one single bare lamp hanging against
the moth love and spiderweb of window and i could stay out there
all night imagining i was soaring flying breathing sky into ground
that i had all the right moves with my strap on wheels catching gravel
but in my mind i was an olympic figure skater i was jennifer beals
in flashdance sarah jessica parker in girls just want to have fun winning
every dance competition in that edge of summer night in new york state
gliding by the pulse of fireflies to any song i happened to catch on the radio
joan jett prince cyndi lauper ac/dc stevie wonder and not much has changed
i still love rollerskating and rock & roll still long for my parents' approval
while my aqua-wheeled skate catches pavement lets out a wolf groan
as a moon-fueled fingernail grows in the sky