Two pillows and a table cover
in the dance studio office
in Table View, during
the Foxtrot, Samba Line Dance, and
Vienna Waltz, of us.
I don’t dance anymore.
But nor do we sleep homeless
in studios where you work
when I was a break dancing painter.
Do musicians know
how their songs linger in
dancers’ souls
like this:
Madman Butterfly
holding to the pollen
of a gone flower.
I miss our Tango
at two in the morning alone
full-lift tangle-foot free.
But not the hangover, and sleeping
in a park when the function
of normal life, the next day
made our dream in the music silent
though forever, gone dancer
awesome ridiculous.
Warren is a painter and poet and writer. He can say that at wine tastings with confidence. He is also editor-in-chief for Botsotso and rights and permissions manager for the Alan Paton Will Trust, literary editor to award-winning African authors and co-founder of the Hotazel Review, as well as being one of the rare species of agents in Africa, which he shooshs. His work has been longlisted for the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award and is a finalist for the Kikwetu Flash Fiction Contest. He has, most recently, also had poetry published by New Coin and the Botsotso Literary Journal, with South African-based creative non-fiction forthcoming in the Mumbai-based, Usawa Literary Review. He lives in Gqeberha, in the Eastern Cape, and when not in the engine room of other author’s dreams, can be found at his easel, his first love.