After bandaging blisters
and taping arches, we bent our shoes
in half, worked the toe boxes
softened through repetition and sweat,
stuffed the tips with matted wool,
snuffed each foot inside, wrapped
ribbons taut in pink X-es,
knots tucked inside the ankles.
Then to the rosin box, to grind
pointes and heels against
yellow powder in a crust
of sticky crystals. Without rosin,
you could slip or skid, plummet
when the gesture was sustained.
Rosin gave grace, the delicate grip
of slowing satin against wood.
To complete this small friable ritual
was to be ready. I didn’t know
where the substance came from,
only that it let the body go
fluid on stage, silk across
the footlights, banking glide.
Matter that is itself a flux,
melted from pine—
loblolly, longleaf, maritime—
the stumps and roots of fallen
trees chipped and soaked
in copper stills, resin heated
to vaporize then brought to a pliable glass.
From pitch to yellow to water-white,
rosin holds flow, pours in and out
of its own shape. Left alone,
rosin cakes will start to course
and rosin too burns with a smoky flame
a mystic smoke that dances
from fingertips when rubbed,
that must have left a trail
of tiny vapors as we spun
solid to liquid to air.
Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of five poetry collections, most recently the collaborative chapbook, Dear Question, with L.I. Henley, from Glass Lyre Press. Other titles include Foxlogic, Fireweed (Backwaters Press/Univ. of Nebraska), Little Spells, and James Laughlin Award winner, How to Live on Bread and Music. She teaches poetry workshops at the University of Redlands, in California where she lives with her family. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared widely in journals, most recently in About Place, Bear Review, Birdcoat Quarterly, Maine Review, Plant-Human Quarterly, Rust & Moth, Sixth Finch, The Shore, Waxwing, and Verse Daily.
