for Juliet Prowse and Terry Leone

Is a rhetoric in the eye.
We come in love and leave in love

With the expert conjugation of limbs
And feathers, high-heeled shoes and slender

Light. “Ooooh it’s going to be a tough one
Tonight, Juliet.” The consonants

Of fabulous form play on the eye
As guitar strings, strummed,

Thrum the ear. And ooooh the fat
And spangled mind will dragoon

The stunning sentences, will grimly
Note each misplaced moue,

Each faulty flourish and clarify
The prepositional grace, the long and

Lovely floor line, the gorgeous
Hem. The structure is grand,

The floor covered with proud
and demotic stars. In perfect

Rhyme and the present tense
They announce their favored metaphors:

Passa Doble, Fox Trot,
The Samba and Rhumba,

And enhance their grammar
With fluid ornament. The mood

Of this discourse, periphrastic and plump,
Muscles up into lyrics of glamorous freight.

Silken transitions resonate in the air.
To meter and flare, substance

Is subordinate. God
How we love the dance.