Ballerinas

Posted on 2013/09/18 by Bartholomew Barker

(Here’s another poem from Wednesday Night Regular. Expect a big announcement real soon now!)

Ballerinas

All little girls at some point
Want to be ballerinas
To color with joyful dance
This gray grown-up world
But life dissolves dreams
Debts demand payment
With money as easy as
Lifting a skirt
Delicate limbs twist
To please hollow men
Watching their phones
Instead of breasts freed
For their approval
Rejection still burns
Livers overwhelmed
Eyes looking nowhere
The personal cost of business
For grown-up ballerinas

Whatever brought you to my table
I’m glad you’re here tonight
With me

Ballerinas

Ballerinas

Illustration by Tammy Atkinson of Atkinson Creations

About Bartholomew Barker

Bartholomew Barker is one of the organizers of Living Poetry, a collection of poets and poetry lovers in the Triangle region of North Carolina. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he makes money as a computer programmer to fund his poetry habit.
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