Excerpts from
There Is a Death at the End of This Dance
(Or: These Are the Facts of My Body)
A Handbook for Artistic Survival in the 21st Century
Survival in the 21st century
requires becoming at least 30% feral.
Then add 1% for every clock tick in your day.
Add 2% for every time you did not howl barbarically.
Add 3% for each time you should’ve felt hunger but didn’t;
for each time you choked down the story that flopped like a fish in your throat.
Add 5% for each of the last 365 days when you did not stretch out luxuriously long and then curl back into yourself.
Add 10% for each time your body yearned to throw a tantrum but didn’t.
Add 20% for each time you tried to think or see your way into survival.
Making meaning out of muck renders sight irrelevant:
It requires a dark, murky depth,
silty and algae covered,
where pearls cannot be seen, only felt
by hands, arms, feet, soft rolling bellies and squishy spines,
soft skulls, deflated cheeks, and slackened jowls.
Only softened flesh can feel the pearls,
which you’ll find you didn’t need anyway
and so you leave them safe in the muck
where they stay as part of your collection.
Honor Song for Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford
There is a courtroom in my heart
where the guilty reside in miniature.
They curl in fetal circles, for my heart
already knows them.
I am not a forgiving judge.
I do not sentence restoratively.
My body is a sovereign nation, and not necessarily a peaceful one.
Instead, I use spit and bone
and long banshee hair that was pulled out in rages.
I stir them with chips of granite from past enemies
I turned to stone.
I fashion a fire and air witch-spirit
that rises like a Disney villain above a cauldron.
My body is a sovereign nation, and you must obtain a visa before you approach.
The courtroom in my heart
has a backed-up docket,
where the guilty are sentenced to the wrath of the raging witch-spirit.
Their victims witness from offstage—
the unseen in the theatre of rage—
they leave silently when they are sated.
In my sovereign nation, a breach of any DMZ is an immediate cause for war.
The victims, light as birthday balloons,
float out of my heart
and go on to live incredible lives.
But the guilty must finish their sentences.
And so, I carry them around in my ribcage,
in this courtroom of mine, pressing against my lungs.
I shouldn’t have to build a wall to keep you out. But there you always are.
Trying to get in.
My heart, the anvil.
I lug it around from place to place
as I fold the laundry
and attempt tasks of which I am mysteriously incapable.
Robin Raven Prichard was a dancer in her first act, and a choreographer/dance professor in her second act. Now in her third act, she writes dance scholarship, poetry, creative non-fiction, and whatever else she wants. This is the first time she is outing herself as a poet.