The meat dance, after Amiri Baraka

The Dance (for Robert Duncan)
Amiri Baraka, aka Leroi Jones

The dance (held up for me by
an older man. He told me how. Showed
me. Not steps, but the fix
of muscle. A position
for myself: to move.

David Hammons

Duncan
told of dance. His poems
full of what we called
so long for you to be. A
dance. And all his words
ran out of it. That there
was some bright elegance
the sad meat of the body
made. Some gesture, that
if we became, for one blank moment
would turn us
into creatures of rhythm.

Jana Sterbak, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic, 1987-2006

I want to be sung. I want
all my bones and meat hummed
against the thick floating
winter sky. I want myself
as dance. As what I am
given love, or time, or space
to feel myself.

Mark Prent, Thawing Out, 1972

The time of thought. The space
of actual movement. (Where they
have taken up the sea, and
keep me against my will.) I said, also,
love, being older or younger
than your world. I am given
to lying, love, call you out
now, given to feeling things
I alone create.

Zhang Huan, My New York, 2002

And let me once, create
myself. And let you, whoever
sits now breathing on my words
create a self of your own. One
that will love me.

Tania Bruguera  (via)