Dance Party, Written and Read by Clint Smith

Sometimes in the evenings after dinner, after the spaghetti has been slurped and I've

bribed the broccoli into their bellies, I give both of my children the look.

When my eyes meet theirs, they know what time it is.

They push in their chairs, they stretch their legs, and we move the table to the far end

of the dining room to clear space for what we all know is coming.

Alexa, play the post dinner dance party playlist, and within seconds Martha washes booming

voice rolls like thunder over our bodies.

Everybody dance now.

The electronic keyboard and the drums meet in the middle of the room, like two dinosaurs

ready to claim the kitchen as their own, immediately the jumping begins, and my daughter

is flinging her limbs like an off-beat octopus, hand slapping the air behind her as if she

is trying to smack anyone who enters her sacred space.

I turn around and my son is doing the robot, who is being eaten by a robot, who is trapped

in a universe where robots take over the bodies of little boys and peanut butter pajamas,

nonetheless there is a robot somewhere, and my children bless them, have not yet learned

how to clap on the two and four, so I laugh, but also cringe as their small hands make

a mockery of the melody around them.

Now, halfway through the song, everyone is jumping, and I caught up in the ecstasy of this

moment, fall to the ground and convince this low longer young body that it is a good idea

to start doing the worm, and when my children see me, their eyes become pools of possibility,

and it is clear they see this as a clarion call to climb onto my back.

...