The Square Dance

The Square DanceAuthor(s): Patrick O'LearySource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Fall, 1991), p. 167Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20153190 .

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The Square Dance

What must they be thinking? as the bootheels stomp time

on the barn's sawdust floor

8c the rotting boards whine

up & down rusty nails

like a plucked thing of music, not the fiddle, not the banjo, not the Jew's harp or the caller

in the polyester collar

who sells life insurance

& like hick electrons we hoot, sweat & hoe down,

& locked at the elbow we swing & do-si-do

while the light bounces off

galvanized washtubs

full of ice, beer & breasts

under gingham do tom-toms

& we all come together,

touching wrists in the middle

like a flower closing up for the night, till we blossom,

reassume goofy orbits

while the dumb/dumb bass picks & grins, Nate spits tobacco

as below us, bewildered

in stalls, watching steam rise

off manure minarets

& the windows of rain,

listening, listening to the yahoos who dance

as they stand fingerless, unable to hold instruments

? the horses?

167

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