Explore Poems: Theater & Dance

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do…

You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended…

You’ve never seen a lilac in Mississippi.
Backstage you wear lotion laced with
its chemical imitation. A ballet mistress
says relevé always as command: lift
onto the toe using only the heel.
Your ankle’s bewilderment
old as the horned owl gaze from
your mother hunched in the...

I did not deserve to be beaten,
and I did not deserve ballet lessons––
except insofar as everyone deserves ballet lessons.
Me mum thought I was well worth beating.
She would not have thought that I deserved to starve.
I deserved the milk in her...

Here is the encyclopedia where I learn first position
Here is where I begin ballet: at 12, in a class of 6-year-olds
Here is where I get my period
Here is where I substitute dance for childhood
Here is studio “B” where I practice
Here...

Under the sagging clotheslines of crepe paper
By the second string of teachers and wallflowers
In the school gym across the key through the glitter   
Of mirrored light three-second rule forever   
Suspended you danced with her the best slow dancer   
Who stood on tiptoe who...

Think of the fox skins belted to the backs of the dancers

at Santo Domingo Pueblo, a thousand fox skins leaping.

The first year I heard the bells around their waists.

The second year I heard the drum inside my belly.

The third year...

Sorry, I assumed you were awake anyway.

Let's try it without the heavy breathing
toward the end of the scene in the garden.
It distracts, somehow. Just speak the words, there
and elsewhere, as loudly
or as quietly as they need to be spoken.
Need in...

A much-needed swan song from Cain, blasting Father K’s bien-pensant ideology and everyone else in his path. A neoliberal trying to ingratiate himself with the construction worker and trustafarian alike, his argu-
ments lighter performed as a he’s right, you Ingram....

It is generally believed that the writers had to make the most of a low budget and that this led to the grim determination of writing through restriction, bottle episodes, and constraints. In reality the show was generously bankrolled by...

But not before several undisputed stone-cold classics. This is why we keep writing about Cain: for all its self-indulgent flaws it just gets it so right sometimes. Every standard element is here: the gang is still drinking far too many...

One of Halberg’s more whimsical decisions: just when the action is coming to a head, attempt to pull off
something formally innovative. “Underwritten? Lithe!” could have been a note to his detractors in this
metaphorical on-screen corrections list. Each one of its...

Injured, sleep-deprived, sorely tested, Adah, Cain, and Father K are falsely imprisoned in a shallow cave
with other unfortunates seeking refuge from their war-torn homeland. It is hard to blame the writers’ room
if “Unlike All Other Empires” felt as cynical and...

An extremely hubristic, unflattering, and accurate self-portrait, this episode saw Halberg in direct conversa-
tion with Cain, questioning his own methods. The passing allusion to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin appears
to reference Chapter 4, stanza XXXV: “But I myself read my bedizened /fancies,...

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The show remains, unshot. Adah rants. Cain bares his teeth. Starvation: a state without border. World without means. Haha. Who’d have thought. Total inter- regnum. Theogony. Thrombotic idea. (Debt flogs verb.) A retro daydream: I hid under the hollyhock. The...

Ethics are learned from who you sleep with
the first few times, and theater is sex,
almost. Being in it, I mean, and being young,
with a lot of group undressing
and silence in darkness, chaste
permissions of the cast party,
spiked punch in the recreation...

the city not yet shielded in ice     the harbor not yet
frozen enough     to walk across     trees without leaves
prismatic    the thing no one

thought would happen     happened     in a vast hall
I...

When the mirror swings open, it calls me obscenely
shapely. A ruby wing slaps the glass. Soft smear. Since,
like the drowning trick in reverse, I learned to float

outside myself from a certain, mostly bearable height,
I watch terror push its anthem into...

darkriver moonrise
girlrise locksdrip
firmfoot mudbank
starwheel skinflush

red
mouthswell tongueloll
breastswell hipswell
archback cockride
nailrake treebark
sunripe wombswell
cuntswell rockback
haunchsquat pullsquirt
babesquall blooddrip
sweatdrip slimedrip

devour
headfirst skullcrack
laugh

leaffall headback
laugh

you were seen mother
but there was nothing
to see

Can you let go the concern
for how it began      what happened

Here the word house remains
A reddening (      ) near house

To describe the sounds
coming in      A human voice
barks through the window

the same voice     ...