This Dancing Cinderella is no Miley Cyrus

Unlike Ms. Cyrus in Disney Technicolor,
Cindy wears black high-tops,
and cobbler’s wax won’t hold them down.

She drives a red Ford Focus in a vinyl mini,
works night shifts at Corrugated Box Incorporated
for twice minimum wage.
 
On weekends, she twerks with her prince
‘til dawn, her brow boiling like ethanol,
her feet tireless on the dance-hall parquet.

She burns her lust to cinders,
sleeps among the ashes to noon
in a brass-framed bed.
 
This is a new-world doll locked in uppercase,
rolling boyfriends like stones.
There are no hazel twigs for her devotions,

no pigeon houses or pear trees to hide in,
just Houdini 

wrapped in a straitjacket of Self. 

“This Dancing Cinderella…” was originally published with a different title in Oyez Review, 1993.