Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee. Both “Slices of Alice & Other Character Studies” and a reprint of “Sanity Among the Wildflowers” were published by Cholla Needles Press. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

Dance Class

The ladies line up.
Zigzags of color, degrees
of dress/undress imperfect
with the smell of damp cotton,
pupils wild, electric crinkles
manic in the air.

Ripples splay across the stillness,
fingers shimmer, rings wink
in the mirror like kisses blown,
fractured on windshields
and sunscattered, uncaught.

The ladies bow their heads
with concentration, watch the pound
of the beat in the floor, an hour,
two before the music stops
until next Wednesday,
when the dance begins again.