J P Dancing Bear

The Cannonball
J.P. Dancing Bear

You might see it there: the blue-
black night edging against her flying.
How the golden web catches, breaks her

speed, the arc of descent.
If she were another sort of creature,
The primary-colors costume and sequins

would catch the fast jaws of a predator.
The white gloves on splayed hands
would twitch the hunger of a hunter.

With a boom she breaks
through the huge paper star
and the aria of the audience's ahh!

She's learned the art of physics:
mass and velocity, gymnastics.
To hold for a moment of weightlessness

before the fetal-curl falling. She is used
to the afterscent of gunpowder
in her hair, accustomed to air

coursing round her body. She dreams
of flying without her leather skin. Now
she feels gravity as a punishment

for some unconfessed sin.
Was it the tightrope walker,
the acrobat or the barker

who gasped watching her fall
back to the patient earth?
Not all the stars are made of paper,

and that is where her heart stays—
aloof to projectiles that puncture the stars
for a crowd of approval.

She presents a prayer to the Flying Saints
and lowers into the mouth of the cannon.
She is born with her mass under velocity,

A soaring cross, outstretched
for redemption and she feels Newton's ghost
crawl the length of her spine.

She is close to being air, her body
makes exchanges with other molecules.
Here, she thinks of arms flattening to wings,

But whistled heaviness fills her, pulls her
into a red ball, bright bullet speeding back.
She groans out again,

Lord, whose name is an engine's roar, reshape
me an angel, a messenger, your harbinger
of doom, in return for true flight.

J. P. Dancing Bear's first book of poems is Billy Last Crow (Turning Point Books, 2004). His second book of poems, Conflicted Light , will be published in 2007 by Salmon Poetry. He is the host of “Out of Our Minds” a weekly poetry program on public radio station KKUP, the editor of The American Poetry Journal and the independent literary press, Dream Horse Press. His poems have appeared in the National Poetry Review, Shenandoah, Mississippi Review and New Orleans Review.