Dance for Film, 2020-2021
Bunny (Excerpt)
...
MY BIRTH WAS ONE PART OF HIS PERPETUAL SEARCH.
The morning after this thought
I ran alongside a rabbit.
She appeared from the diagonal,
and then we were two creatures
moving in the same direction
looking at each other.
Thought stopped.
That’s how joy is:
An image, a feeling and the tricksters’ game of potential
I imagine me and this rabbit going on forever
caught up in the moment
with the ease of of our legs
the smell of the first lilacs,
the sponge of the new grass-
Surprise
but sustained
until she leads me to her house,
which is a soft nest of tiny babies
underneath the horizon
that I rest my fingertips on.
Right when they invite you in,
the love starts.
Right when the love starts,
a bundle of nerves
send the message to dart away
and part of you does go,
focused and searching for the end.
You know what I found?
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve that connects our brains to our guts, to our voices and to our hearts. When we sing, or hum, or even talk, it vibrates behind the root of the nose, which is the most primordial tool of our bodies. This nerve controls the rhythm and tempo of heartbeats and seals the codes of our memories so we can’t forget. Our hearts send out these electromagnetic waves which allow our whole selves to be felt and heard in faraway places, even beyond this world and time, and there are thousands of worlds and times.
In this world and time, I was called Bunny.
...
That night I had a dream
I was on a ladder,
yet again, a ladder
I had gone up quickly many times
or supposed I had
until that last time
and I was tired
or that was my excuse
but actually
I was terrified.
My right-hand grip was hyper-detailed-the cramping, the friction and heat, the crazy repositioning, the swelling of my knuckles, the concrete bucket of time elapsing where I could not figure out how to move any one of my limbs-a man climbed up behind me, agile as anything, and all of a sudden the front of his body was nestling the back of mine, and it felt so strangely good, and I thought, after imagining him entering me, “At least I’m not going to fall back and be smashed.” I looked long at his left hand and silently described it as huge as my face contorted into several expressions of being smashed. I knew I just had to move my right foot up to the top which meant I had to move my left hand first because good movement is cross-lateral, but my body wouldn’t do it this way. Instead, both my right limbs went at the same time. This last awkward movement was like the slow and agonizing lift of a father’s axe on the sacrificial mound. His breathing quickens into a pant with sound, arhythmic sobs, and the axe goes up slowly as the sweat pours down in sheets from his head, mixing into his tears, and it all becomes a river swirling around their feet, (or is it a pool down there?) and the grip on the axe and the gravity in his stomach becomes eerily light at the top of the swing, and the vacuum of his mouth opens into the hot, thick air and pulls in just one breath, and he clamps it inside. His enormous eyes capture the visual of the next nano-second before he can squeeze it out, and he sees his sweet daughter’s image like a fly does, in all directions, all the way around his head, in all 8,000 lenses, her face, her body, her face, her body, her face, her body, her face
Thinking skipped.
I was UP!
onto a flat surface
somewhere below a white void
I DID IT!
Then, my mind in my dream scolded me
and urged me to go down the step I messed up on
and do it again
but right.
-Published by Dancing Girl Press