If ladies were swans with long necks,
those would be the necks I’d grab them by.
I know my mother’s spent all this money
to see me on this stage, but something
about me gives me the right to ruin everything.
My pink taffeta is melting.
Fog is a stage-prop. Here, dancing
means sawing, and like my mother’s cunt
was a yo-yo, I spin across a stage.
I know it better than anyone:
To be a ballerina is to break cartilage,
break bone.
Adriana Beltrano is a Floridian poet and a senior editor of The Hopkins Review. She is a 2026 Poetry Society of America Summer Fellow and was selected by Diane Seuss as an honorable mention for the 2025 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Passages North, and Puerto del Sol.
