Poetry by Alston Tyer

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Plié 

You shed your dancer mantle in leaps 
before permitted time. A girl’s got to
learn to bend, you’re taught, 
shift face, cover slipped decorum. 

                Steps, you remember.
                Ordered silverware set 
                in arbitrary place. You track 
                a creek, dry birth to tributary. 

You tithe your song. 
You ride scooters down mountains, 
wear wrist-length white gloves. 
You itch beneath ballet tights. 

                How they feel
                when they peel off, a hidden skin sloughed.
                How you see in the mirror a different girl 
                than the one who walked in. 

You take your gentle fireworks 
and stoke flame on a tree stump,
under a stripped Barbie doll. 
You melt her clean

                and climb through windows 
                when you find the doors locked.
                Your tickets earn a hero’s cutlass
                forged in cheap green plastic.

Your best friend’s parents 
won’t gift her a real sword 
for fear of lethal reprisal: 
she deals and grows. 

                You bury your storybook 
                and shoot yourself in the foot. 

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Alston Tyer is a poet and recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her work has appeared in The Shore Poetry and Frozen Sea and is forthcoming in Lumina and Crow & Cross Keys. She currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.
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