<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Mrs Gilhooly, Dancing<\/strong><\/p>\n Every so often she climbs the stair. She goes to birl, Ill-setten and gawkit, Once, when they were young, Pale-lipped and happer-ars\u2019d Young at heart, she descends the stair – Gently she will take his hand and warm it in her own. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Neil Leadbeater<\/strong> is an editor, author and poet living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His poems and short stories have been published widely both at home and abroad. His latest book, Librettos for the Black Madonna, was published by White Adder Press in 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mrs Gilhooly, Dancing Every so often she climbs the stair. She goes to birl, to fit the flair, to wind the gramophone on an upright chair, and lilts full throttle through her bobs and reels, her chicken vocals bleating peals in the raw November air. Ill-setten and gawkit, her man lies hoose-fast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4568"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4570,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions\/4570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nto fit the flair,
\nto wind the gramophone on an upright chair,
\nand lilts full throttle through her bobs and reels,
\nher chicken vocals bleating peals
\nin the raw November air.<\/p>\n
\nher man lies hoose-fast in the downstairs room
\nthowless as a dead wind.<\/p>\n
\nshe tried to make him dance. That way he
\nastonished himself
\nin his long-quartered town-mades, one een a-gley
\nin the full-length glass. Even then
\nhe could not do it. His wooden feet
\nweighed like clay and would not yield to the floor.
\nInhibition checked him. It held him in his track.
\nSo she had this fling in secret, a quiet
\ndesperation
\nwhich she did behind his back.<\/p>\n
\nshe skilts round the running room. The recollection
\nof jumbled steps falls from her feet by chance:
\na hotchpotch of gallops which the years have slowed
\nto a thin patter of rain.<\/p>\n
\nan old woman who has no shame.<\/p>\n
\nShe is giddy with jigging in the upstairs room
\nand sad to feel alone.<\/p>\n