Songs for Two Dancers

By Janet Ruth Heller

For Luise Wickell

Your pensive writhing

punctuated by long pauses

and held body poses

like statues and sculptures

transform Purcell’s triplets

into commentary on women’s

fixèd lives.

For Gale Ormiston

I am twenty thousand leagues

under the sea of your modern dance.

You unfurl crimson streamers

then throw the crepe

around the spectators,

entwining our bodies like algae.

We feel like part of the performance

as we wave, laugh, and splash

in this choreographed ocean.

Janet Ruth Heller has taught literature and creative writing at eight colleges and universities. She has published four poetry books: Nature’s Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012), and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). The University of Missouri Press published her nonfiction book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (1990). Fictive Press published Heller’s middle-grade chapter book about sibling rivalry, The Passover Surprise (2016). Her children’s book about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edition 2022), has won four national awards. Website: https://www.janetruthheller.com/