Phyllis Meshulam -- meshulaph@yahoo.com

Phyllis Meshulam has her B.A. in Theater Arts from Pomona College and her MFA in both poetry and fiction from Vermont College. Phyllis has been a poet in the schools since 1999 and area coordinator since 2003. She is bilingual, author of a Spanish as a Second Language curriculum and has 14 years of experience as an elementary school Spanish teacher. She also teaches ESL to adults.

Phyllis' poetry has appeared in many literary magazines and won numerous awards, including placing as a finalist in the U.S. Poet Laureates-judged competition for The Dickens. She was a judge for the NEA pilot poetry recitation contest, an instructor in Luther Burbank Center Creative Writing Workshops, and in a bilingual parents' stories class. A member and sometimes leader of Maxine Hong Kingston veterans' writing group, she is scheduled to have three of her poems appear in an anthology of writing from this group, forthcoming in 2006.

She has a particular mission to bring poetry to low-income schools and schools with populations with limited English. Her grant-writing skills have helped make this dream a reality. During an average week these days, she goes from teaching suburban second graders, to adult construction workers learning English as a second language, to high school students at juvenile hall.   

 

LONG DISTANCE DANCER

The wallflower peels off the wall,
becomes a centerpiece,

no longer strangled in closet tangos,
but spun in an evening glory

of a skirt, one that suggests her shape,
the bends, Cs, Ss she can make.

She shall have shoes she can lace with her toes,
red shoes, black shoes, sensually slick shoes,

with miles recorded in their scuff marks,
and more to go before she'll snooze.

They'll call it caffeine. They'll call it leaded fuel.
But it s poetry in Motown, la donna e mobile.         

They won t know what to do with her, those columns of cool.
She'll dip and step, step pause, pure cantabile,         

not terse but tercet, verse and reverse,
turn and return, burn and reburn,         

catlike tread, sawhorse prance,
Zydeco two step, catapult tattoo.         

With celtic calligraphic jig-saw cutting feet,
Flamenco telegraphic, rat-a-tat toe tap heels,         

she sparks the high voltage high wire, and braids
the borders of the floor with ribbons she can feel.

Step up to your shadow, dancer. Soar the length
of a catgut-longing kite string
the arc of a catgut-longing line.

previously published in FIRST LEAVES

        

 

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