#191 Kevin Brophy 'On reading "Boys Don't Dance"'

#191 ‘ On reading Boys Don’t Dance’

In this book children beam, grin, smirk,

sneer, groan, and mouths drop open.

We mime each expression,

learning about the word, mime.

Ballet is repeated on several pages.

They learn to say it in several ways.

In this book there is a bully,

a small girl

and her older brother,

a dance teacher,

and a mother,

each of them with something

to say, sing, yell, shout or sneer.

Three boys read the book to me

word by word, each one of them

ready to bully another

by smirking or groaning 

when one of them stumbles, 

stutters, or mistakes

taking for talking, miming for smiling.

I can see, I say to myself,

that this might be what they've found,

an envy tolerant of each other’s envy,

a rough elegance of grins

on the borders of smirk,

groans on the seam of a song,

a dance that happens beyond

me somewhere in their future.