Dance for Film, 2020-2021
B MOVIE (Excerpt)
...
You are moving like a squirrel collecting nuts.
The nuts are actually big black cubes.
The close-ups as you get one into your hands
are heartbreakingly sick
You rip out the velvet bow that holds your dark, glossy hair,
It falls in one blow with the recorded sound of a hatchet.
You roll the black cube around in your obsessive hands,
You sink to your knees
And expose your teeth.
You begin chewing on your little finger and then on the leg
of the chair,
Spitting out sharp, black shards
To the jangly downbeats of the knowing monkey with the tiny
tamborine,
While muttering statements about
flowing
what it used to be like
intuition
fat
thumbs
what it was before
sentiment
sparkles
ego
smiling
shoulds
Your legs march like a begging dog,
Mouth is open and stomach is heaving.
You bring the black, dense cube close and softly close your
eyes
And begin to deeply kiss it
You suck out some mysterious inky sap
Which also begins oozing down the walls
And dripping from the ceiling
Like a black sauna
Either
You don’t notice
And you’re not scared
And it feels (and looks) like pleasure
Or
You do notice
And you’re very scared
Because it is pleasurable
...
If this movie was a novel, the author, who might be workshopping, would be urged to write a singular statement: this novel is about self-hate. He might, if prompted to expound, make a connection between the woman and a sucker tree: a tree that springs up by accident and stands, but without deep roots or a strong middle.
Richard Burton, with two weeks left to live, would say, as he shifts and angles just so in his chair, that he has stood at the edge of the dark wood, and felt the glory, and was terrified.
If this movie was a dance, the breath in the body would be so fast that the slowest movements would go forth in ecstatic and repeated stoppings. If this was my dance, I would wonder just how much flickering light would be needed to keep me alive and interesting and keep the black velvet cube from being lost and the dark space from eating me.
-Published by Dancing Girl Press