Maureen Kingston
Do the Hustle
She wears a floral wrap dress. He’s in powder blue. The room dims. Beep beep. Red pin lights shimmer on the ceiling. Beep beep. She follows his lead, lets him turn her this way and that. Beep beep. He Travolta-points his magic wand up, up then down, down. The ballroom thrums. When he leans into her dance space, her heartbeat gallops. Too fast. Like sweltering, airless days in the confessional when she was ten. “I haven’t been a good girl,” she sputters to her new priest. Old French sins tumble out. Cabernet. Chocolate mousse. Gauloises. “Hush, now,” he says, unsticking electrodes from her chest.
2 a.m. fog
the muffled echo
of clicking heels
About the Author
Maureen Kingston’s poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Failed Haiku: A Journal of English Senryu, Gone Lawn, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Maudlin House, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Sledgehammer Lit, Unbroken Journal, and Whiskey Island. A few of her poems and prose pieces have also been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart awards.