As you all know, our double issue of Five Points Vol. 15, No. 1 & 2 is on sale now, and we’d like to give you a little preview of one of the poems you’ll find inside:
At the Degas Exhibit
by Gregory Fraser
***
The docent wends us to The Dance Class
and it all flits back: the studio downtown,
few bucks an hour, ragging off the finger
***
grease of toe-shoed cygnets, tutu-ed swans,
scudding hardwood and ignoring both
of me—spray of acne, high-top Keds.
***
I would clatter on the local after school
(weekends once the Christmas pageant neared),
my face at every stop floating outside
***
the window beside my seat—a mask
tried on by stars in movie ads, commuters
cooling heels for later cars. Then Windex,
***
buff, till six, waving hello, farewell,
from glass to glass, plié to pointe—my hand
emitting squeaks, eliding dainty prints and streaks.
***
In my knapsack: comics, Catcher, lunch
untouched. And never once did I happen on
the courage even to speak to one of those
***
sugar plums of Rittenhouse, Society Hill.
Degas’s girls, our guide informs, practice
attitudes, inspected by their master
***
(one Jules Perrot) propped on his staff.
Note the Parisian mothers daubed
on the wall in back. Yet I see only tights
***
that bear the stamp McDevitt Dance,
hear gripes about third position, giddy talk
of boys. And search the sides and corners
***
for my Old World counterpart—some
sponge-and-bucket kid from a ragged edge—
undersized, near-sighted, invisible to art.
Here’s a little more info on Gregory Fraser:
Fraser is the author of two poetry collections, Strange Pietà (Texas Tech, 2003) and Answering the Ruins (Northwestern, 2009). He is also the co-author, with Chad Davidson, of the workshop textbook Writing Poetry: Creative and Critical Approaches (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008) and the composition textbook Analyze Anything: A Guide to Critical Reading and Writing (Continuum, 2012). His poetry has appeared in journals including the Paris Review, the Southern Review, the Gettysburg Review, and Ploughshares. The recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fraser serves as associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of West Georgia.
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