I refuse you the glory. You may think your questions reveal; in truth, they diffract. These are confetti aspersions. You think you are wry and acrylic. I’ve been in parades. I’ve twirled. Two hours of tossing and which hurts more, shoulder or ankles? And how cold the body—despite fire batons. I’ve been very cold. From the sockets. Dislocated. Limbs pretending toward something I have no belief in. This work will not be like that. And you will fund it. It takes one woman because that is all it takes. No, she is not Jesus. I find the shape of the cross indexical: the crucifix—crosshatching. The cross imitates destination. You sign your name there, and this work is not about the individual. Yes, I already know the dancer. No, not nepotism. Try revenge. I am angry because of the animals—so many animals cannot fly. She should be able to fly. I take the bat as my model. As for my audience—their eyes blank and filled with sand—they offend me. Your questions are meant to trip and humiliate and naked. You think I lack grace. I do not. I will answer. Watch the flashing stitch of my scalpel. It will answer—it will connect us with blood.

one dancer

required to be omega
older than her peers, in some way
bird-like, quick and puckish, prone to flight
prone to spasms
prone to on-stage orgasm
armed with working feet and a hole
in her heart that could lead
to certain death (strains of the 5th—three duhs
one duhm) therefore
damaged
karma-wise, all birds have issues
hollow bones, a diet of seeds
small eyes, their alertness instinct
not intuition, not intellect although
appearing intellect, required to
required to fool us all—up to and including
moment omega, and crucially

she must not believe in her own death

I call it “sphinx”
—after all the animal forms, because as an adolescent
she wanted to be panther—before that
(we are told) the imagination
on a girl doesn’t work, the lightbulb
unscrewed, pre-screwed
before fourteen the girl can only think (told
to think) princess movie-star princess ballerina princess
“sphinx” is the path any woman follows
to stone, and the setting out begins
at fourteen, or thereabouts, partly
because the woman chosen to dance this
has a body perpetually there
barely budded breasts, erratic menses (her neck
regrettably, reads twenty-nine) but
we have pancake, we have wigs
we have heavy heavy wings
the path to stone is long, like Job’s, and this—
this happens to every woman who has ever wanted
as the world says no and no again and no
and her father says no and her mother, her aunts say no
and her sister glares at her from underneath, raging
that she has asked the unaskable,
which is—to have, or worse
that she may take

is puppeteer
am puppeteer, I shouldn’t mind
the cross
balsa wood with wires hanging
down, on the ends a woman
twitching
her last nerves
jangling, wind-
chiming—I shouldn’t mind owning her
not owning my own body so clearly
she stands between me
and it, technically
dwarfing my own limbs—lengths
of clotted dust wrapped
inexpertly
around brief bones—(like asbestos
the warmth of glass disguised
as cotton candy)
my own limbs thud, truncated
things—while hers              extend
filled with blood and oil
capable of roll
and burn
and windmill—her whole body
working
what cannot be seen
into kinetics
                          while only my hand is employed

Do you want to see these? I can burn them. I have wanted to burn them. They are bag worms. They kill what they inhabit. Collectively, they are heavy as an albatross. Have you noticed?—so many white elements: every bird or bride a gravesite, a pupa. Wings are my deformities. I have too often stolen through these pages disturbing the air. You asked to see them, you said you would consider, and still you bait me as if I were your hook—when what I am is fallen bits of sky tied up in insect. You are gluttonous. Fish, fish—only give me the space. I need a theater for my death. And you have more than you have need.

I dress the stage as
a single blade of grass
—sharp
so her feet bleed

have curtains hung
darkly—estranging
strangling her
between room and window

blindfolded
the set to her—a minefield
of opening
doors, dropped prosceniums

the audience directed
to stand and jeer, in masks
I sew, and place—
eyes out—on each stiff velvet seat

she will hear percussion
strings—

the heart and the heart, its two
reptilian chambers

any board of directors will
wonder why not an orchestra

her instability, I say, well-marked
by cello, bass and timpani
by high-hat and violin
by brush and pluck—pizzicato
undercut by static

or, alternately, sparse ivory—
a solo piano, the mind of the she (also
percussive, though less pleading, more
self-satisfied, more capable, not
of masturbation, but masturbation to climax
than string) spare
awkward-handed notes

this is a one-woman ballet
                            still
the board asks for a symphony
and perhaps a children’s choir?
the community brought
together to fill seats
and promote a vast sleep

no Monk, no Pärt, no rock, no
computer music, original composition, local artist

if I must be avant-garde—why not Stravinsky—
soon, if not already, public domain?

my answer is this
is a one-woman ballet
are you one woman?
am I? leave
me fucking alone

the stage, side-lit from below—her face as if
just above a rising water—muscles outlined
in a reversal of shadow—the dancer semi-blind
and hobbled during each false exit—
                                                        she will know them
as shin-busters: the obstacles which light her way

The bored. Elite. Superior. Marrow-suckers, melodramatists. Internal soliloquists. Those who carry with them at all times the scent of molding grain. Analysts. Aphids : cows of the ant-world. Critics. Constipated money-releasers. Excretionists. Snails—slow-moving and self-fucking. Paternalistic, clever, correct. Faceless and plural. Anemic. Undeniable. The chemical cause of my paralysis—clothed in a gown of strung teeth.

the obvious choices are obvious and therefore
not available to me, being
as I am, for shock’s sake
so I give Giselle the straight-jacket, drab
web edged in thorn to the sleeping
beauty, tatters
of sacrificial garb to any woman enough
to brave this write of spring

what is left is dross, dusty tapestries
of onions, scarves, polemics—

I would choose nakedness
were total vulnerability an option

it isn’t—she must have
the illusion that she may yet
live through this, otherwise

her sour metallics and that look—
toward me and accusing—would
alert the audience to the punch-line

: she is about beauty about to die

I’ll dress her in a leotard of bone
a cliché of porcelain
—shard, crescent, calla lily, moon—
the she: an electric white stone

(I am I suppose obvious)

that is its own shock, at least I pray
this is baroque—I am exhausted
of the minimal, and have for so long
longed to make something beautiful final

fourteen
the girl is on verge
of something, she can’t
tell, the girl can’t tell
what it is, nor
can she tell other things
cannot say happened
happened is not her word



dreamt is a word, imagined
is, purple is a bruise word
that gets green, spring is
get-green too, and green-getting—
that’s envy, the girl has
an older sister who never tells
her anything

about older
they should be together
a force, instead
the girl is on
verge
without a railing, her sister
a vacant on the bed

one prop
lights out, as soft
as lead, do you think
the girl should write it down, or
should she smother it? she a series of
does it
with a pillow
and it dies, she watches it—
the thing—
die

some things (not
the girl) have more
than that
one life though

You were an only child? A middle child? A squadron? We don’t want the vague. The green. We want fashion. We want red is the new black. We want real fur again—we want leather. What happened to glamour? Who killed glamour? Was it your girl? Did you make her a killer? We do it out of love. Why did you do it? Did you tell her glamour was his belt-buckle? Did you hand her a knife? Did you tuck it discreetly under which pillow? The down one. Oh yes, the down… When she left, dreaming homicide, what did she become? Is she Jesus? Are we supposed to buy that? Do not make us regret our investment. We could pull out, and then how hot is your bother? And into what pit might you let her fall? What would be her lowest rung? Give us a bite, pop culture or porn. Come on. Come all over.

in the beginning of woman
nineteen, say, twenty-three
                             movement throughout—stylized
woman has everything
woman has pearls and furs, a Jag
woman has men and education
woman has beauty and money enough to retain beauty
                                                                                             longer than is healthy or advisable?
woman wants no children
                             2-dimensional, hieroglyphic, flapper-esque
woman eats well, not
often, woman’s appetite is relegated
to gin, amphetamines and sex—combinations
of these with furs and pearls
men, sometimes other
women                                                                          Here we go
women who don’t own as much
woman is sad, as sad as other women, women
with children and food who are
sad, who don’t have as much time
to eat themselves in quite the same way
                             deco, dancer angular, dancer arachnid
then woman
woman loses everything
read: a prodigal                                 old testament
unrepentant, unreturning, all
bone
                             dancer indecorous, exo-skeletal, emotion-ridden
a crying jag
years long, acres
woman does not find
inner strength, religion, a life-mate, irony
or purpose
                             given steps beyond virtuosity, dancer failing
woman shrivels
fat in her blood undermines
sanity woman falls into a pit
lions in the pit, and she, lacking all and spine too
covets their furs and sharp pearls
their lumbar vertebrae, so
the woman takes on their hindquarters
and initiates “sphinx”                           Better
                             more poise during descent, more poise, more
woman has not
woman has not yet
woman has yet to ask for anything
has yet to comprehend
encompass
                             dancer failing direction
woman, un-quixotic and un-faced
wildly, materially abandoned
woman outside the woman she never was inside
                             dancer passing from consciousness during second intermission
inside she never was woman, was, instead—
an erosion
                             brought back with salts

                                           by whom? —a sister?

of course, yes

they all go mad midway
through the white ballets and I
am somewhat a purist                        the twist is if you—
                                       if I started her there
                             let her find touchstone
and had her lose it again                                    her pain—
                                                       a purpling thing—like flowers
                                       for a pet rat
                her floor patterns
echoes of a mazed search for what
                                                       only fades
                                       and at the end
                                                                    some Pavlovian
reward                    maybe a lovely swan-death

                she’d want to end it well

romantically                                      she’d want me
                             to be sorry
                                                                    unfortunate
                                                                    that you—
that I do not factor—
                as this is not a making
                             and having learned from previous studies

choreographer enters stage left
             I enter stage left
dancer is corpse
her half-body jutting out of stage right wing
she looks like a doll don’t you think
she looks like a doll? I think
             the choreographer thinks
she looks like a doll
and it must have been a stabbing
             there is blood, the blue light
black shape
slowly transgressing the stage
as if the doll has a living, increasing
shadow
             as if an ocean were crossed
             on a bed
             and in the wake, a dark scar
the bed sits upstage
un-seaworthy, tall posters    fire batons?
—a gondola
through a narrow waterway at the entrance of ocean
and in this fake river, a floating
a girl, and the doll a girl doll, a Coppelia
no more bird riddling us with her
body    no dove released, no Ararat
no sands, no sphinx no more neon
reading
               GOD—THIS WAY

only rats only scuttling beneath the stage
chute coal
               the blue light, black blood
diamond, something sharp, something cold
will be had from this
                           and not pearl, nothing
                           coats this with shimmering

the last theater riot ever
was never
over murder
               original, a success
               I bow     you drop the knife
the choreographer bows, drops the knife
my sister is dead
               I think we think
I think
a doll, a bird         a question
it is this:
               how could you kill us, angel? didn’t you want us to be your mother?

               [in an alley. torrential rodents
                           river ghastly silver from a stagedoor
                           some streetlamp barely capable of       offering them out