Lucille Gang Shulklapper          Rhythm and Blues in the Nursing Home Second Prize in the 2007 Poetry Contest In the dance of her mind her body curves toward her husband, his name now forgotten, her memory music starts, somehow preserves the airy tunes as though wrapped in cotton, she’s Ginger Rogers, and he’s Fred Astaire, waltzing her through waves of white caps bobbing, past the legless man slumped in his wheelchair, past the shrilling phones, the muffled sobbing. Now, she can mouth gibberish, though her words drown in violins, sink tipsy on floors of waxed recall, like songs of mocking birds from the murmured trees, in the gray outdoors. one two three, one two three, Alzheimer’s beat hammers her toes on her paled shoeless feet.