Dance through tunes of a hopeless world, impressed only when
shoes are strained of toenails, broken ankles, and when ginormous
pulled groins are censored. We clap for final productions only;
we reserve cheers, like gold, for anything but hopeful failures:
uncooked golden nuggets of bulbous teenage bellies.

The smell of travel bagged chips collapses in seat cracks as
the collected audience shifts to complain to phone screens
so they won’t look up to see strobe-lit dazzle: tasseled sequin shame
as form-fitting as latex gloves over gasping human heads.
There are no sweat beads, but they wear never-weary smiles.

To work would be to stop smiling, and that’s all they have.
There is nothing noble in so many things, certainly bad dancing.
They are each perpetual failures in slippers moving in missteps with misshapen
thick hips before anyone screams that dancing is a bad decision.
The audience does not connect eyes, same as any first time,

ensuring at least one of us is having a good time. Young dazzled girls
should be anywhere else, on top of anything but a stage:
xxxUnder stars,
under their first boyfriend, under headphones, under the influence
xxxof music.