Kirby Olson

Kirby Olson is our current guest editor and the author most recently of Gregory Corso: Doubting Thomist (Southern Illinois University Press, 2002).

NIJINSKY'S LEG-ACY

N's powerful upper thighs
(Vietnam vets rolling about w/ leggy memories)
Friends, Americans, countrymen
Lend Nijinsky a leg
Leisurely with an air of indifference
Lolling about in the pharmaceutical châteaux
Flagrant alarms looming in his ears
Nijinsky knew his hoboes were womanly
The aggravations of the Ballet Russe
Somehow the paranoia passed into breath
Sarah Bernhardt's missing leg
Vaslav Nijinsky's missing brain
Belated carnations
Crickets' legs erupt into music as they rub
Our legs take us through stores
Across traffic strips
Nijinsky helps us get a leg up on the competition
His Slavic legs akimbo to the bolero
Crickets' legs make music when rubbed together
Nijinsky's musical legs akin to the leaping cricket's