if I were sitting by the side of a small pool

the longer I sat there

the more I would know.

the pier at Coney Island, Stillwell avenue.  I ate an

entire plastic carton of raspberries

and watched a man catch a sting ray

unhook it

and throw it back in

(when we aren’t birds) 

If somebody the world should have hardened

Remain(ed) soft

for so long as if to melt

 

Into hard wood floors

Red, red Virginia clay

Grey, brittle cement

 

They would have won

The game of taking taking taking

And never breaking

people soak up sadness

when they spend time together

the way trees take CO₂ 

out of the atmosphere

and return oxygen

From inside the bus I can see through the window:

the laborious process by which the young bus

driver helps the elderly woman get an

arm through a camel colored coat

 

Her right: it is a clumsy but surprisingly

robust wing that emerges – missing the hole

for an arm repeatedly but eventually becoming

that which it always was

finding grapefruit gems in the bowels of my hard drive… 

One morning in Maine

I discovered that grapefruit

Can be eaten

With brown sugar

 

This was in the same

town in Maine

where I discovered that grown men

whistle at 12 year old girls

 

Yesterday I told myself

to claim the fact

that feminism is a key research concern

in my work.

 

No more hiding

from what I have known

there comes a time

when we are done.

Go Progeny Dance!

 

W&L Repertory Dance Company & Progeny Dance

http://www.wlu.edu/lenfest-center/calendar/progeny-dance

 

Come see us dance!

New York 

Is a mug of hot cocoa balanced precariously on my hip flexor, 

deep psoas, not yet sore from class 

with Bryan Strimpel, as I listen to George Strait on Pandora and I read Patti Smith talk about New York, over 30 years ago. 
She dropped different names (John Coltrane John Lennon) and took her jelly doughnuts with coffee. 
But perhaps in some ways, it is still the same city. 

Proof of existence is where there is nothing

but this marshy

field

and a ghost of the future

Les choses que tu fait 

The days that are good

are when the desire to dance

is strong.

Those days

it comes out in all my actions.

On the subway ~ in writing

Les jours quand je voudrais danser

et je ne peux pas

mais, yes I can. Just not in class

 

I am back in high school

the same journal

the basement bedroom of a boy

almost having sex

almost caring about a Rubik’s cube

probably wanting to dance

inside.

 

Maintenant c’est tout un rythme

and nothing matters but

following the thread of movement

energy through to the end.

This is how to write poems.

This is how to live life.

Danser. Arrêter. Danser encore.