“Pole Dancing” by Richard Downing
One small Eskimo tribe—
you don’t know them—
knew
of the pole dancing,
of how the bear and the raven
and the seal
would come to watch select members
of the tribe dance naked around
a pole
placed precisely where
the North Pole does not exist.
At first the animals
would come out of curiosity
until they found they wanted to come,
had to come to watch the naked
spectacle. It was at this point
that certain tribesmen began to impose
a cover charge,
to charge for native drinks
that had once been free
and flowing, communal,
to insist the animals not touch
the naked tribesmen
(and certainly not
be touched
by those tribesmen) unless
a price was paid.
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Richard Downing is the author of “Four Steps Off the Path”, a YellowJacket Press 2010 chapbook (contest winner). Downing is also the winner of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Peace Poetry Award; Writecorner Press’s 2010 Editor’s Award; and New Delta Review’s Matt Clark Prize. His poems have appeared in Potomac Review and the anthologies Hunger Enough: Living Spiritually in a Consumer Society; The Dire Elegies; and Against Agamemnon: War Poems. Downing is the co-founder of the Florida Peace Action Network, PhD in English.
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