Lit eZine Vol 5 | p-5 | POETRY | The Dancer – Manic Sylph Writes… Poetry & Thoughts by Mona Soorma

SHORT POEM

THE DANCER
by Emily Bilman

A drummer playing the drum — *Image by PublicDomainPictures*

The drummer improvised 
the drum-beats like the throbs 
of the primaeval forest 
in the primaeval night
until the rhythm of his intuition
resonated with the dancers – 
their eyes gleaming like cats’ 
eyes in the penumbra. 
The rhythm spurred one dancer 
to the dance floor, who broke 
into a mad tarantella, 
thumping the wooden floor with his legs
bending, shaking, twisting
his sweat-drenched bronze torso 
in a totemic trance until 
drum, dancer, and spectator
were blurred out in an oceanic haze.

Connect with Emily Bilman on her website

Dr. Emily Bilman is a widely published and anthologized author of poetry, literary essays, and short stories. Her PhD dissertation, The Psychodynamics of Poetry, was published by Lambert Academic in 2010. Slatkine & Cie published La rivière de soi (2010) in Geneva. Modern Ekphrasis (2013) came out by Peter Lang Academic. Her other poetry books, A Woman by A Well (2015), Resilience (2015), The Threshold of Broken Waters (2018), Apperception (2020), The Undertow (2023) were published by Troubador Books, UK. She won the Polaris Contest with a sonnet entitled “Pathfinder” scheduled to arrive on the moon with NASA time-capsule in 2024.