You, with the Lego Grip around your Pint
We feel you overseeing, through the thrashing of the dancers –
weighing, sizing, rating like a coil-sprung cat.
From the comfort of your bar stool, your scalpel gaze dissects us,
discards the parts deemed failings, carves out our choicest meat.
The music warps and buckles, loses rhythm with our movement,
the joy that we inhabit chips and blisters at the edge.
We shrink back to the shadows at the corners of the dance floor,
in a huddle of protection, shame leadening our legs.
You move on to your next batch for quality assessment.
Take a draught of liquid from your hot-hand smutted glass.
Eilín de Paor lives in Dublin and works in health and social care. Selected for The Stinging Fly Summer School 2019, she has had poems published by Algebra of Owls and The Organic Poet and one upcoming in The Stony Thursday Book. Twitter: @edepaor