Movement Poetry Practice
Coordinates
Quiet
a wash, a wash
a woman.
Vertical fold, horizontal line,
tend-press, open up chest. Moves
residual from Grandmother’s inbetweens.
Child night time mouth practice
“shoulder soldier shoulder soldier.”
Nestled knee to armpit, not being known by others.
If only this space between my arms
is mine,
this much space is mine.
Assigned Seating
Sitting across the
clamouring banquet table from
Kati, with cheekbones like lifeboats protruding from the sides of her skull
and her lover, Felix.
A couple - ferociously
handsome and gray.
They met when she was 13 and he was 17.
It took 20 years to become romantic partners, and they’ve been together
20 years.
When someone mentioned love,
they held their smiles up to each other’s.
They didn’t kiss but,
stayed there a while
with their happy mouths
visiting homebase.
Across the way,
sitting there breathing, and
not being them -
watching,
adding to the cacophony
of the echoey room
with a
screech of the knife
too strongly into the plate
below my fried eggplant portion.
Their particles shimmering,
they must love each other’s breath -
dancing in the wind of it all.
Tree
It has so many broken roots.
Its trunk a visible record of
abandoned labor -
outgrown layers,
left ragged and unsealed.
It started again
so many times -
how embarrassing.