I do jazzercise, and I get the joke.
We did it to ourselves, all those neon yellow
faux sexy tights under high-cut leotards.
The frayed silk flowers.
And even as we get older and older, corporate
still won’t leave us be.
We have to bring our sweet familiar
step-together-step-hop to whatever’s
climbing the pop chart. Except for
Christmas when we get to move
to Hard Candy Christmas.
I only know Dolly as a big-busted joke,
cringe at her platinum wigs.
But when she sings
maybe I’ll dye my hair,
maybe I’ll lose some weight
each word is a piece of tinsel.
I feel part of something that matters—
hearing someone in pain,
not dancing away.
Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake & Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has recently appeared in Poetry East, Last Syllable, Only Poems, and Grist among many other journals, and she has received a Pushcart prize honorable mention. She is a poetry reader for The American Journal of Nursing, SWWIM and Whale Road Review.