ISSUE 8 - DANCE

CONTENTS

As a dancer I always used words and image as my sources of
inspiration. I knew that deep in the sound of a word there was
movement deep in the image there was silence deep in movement
there was stillness deep in my heart the pause

was full of potential movement sound and pictures moving
interwoven and rich it is in this sacred pause

that all the voices all the dances and all the images begin to flow
from this source open and full of nothing and all possibility to
connect

words steps images people

begins

poets have inspired dancers for centuries, dance the poet,

images linked together through words move us as poems dance
through our memories lines become verse and

stillness

between

each the chain of language

dancer poet mover

I am image transparent

flickering with love



Many thanks to Carolyn Boll for introducing the Dance issue with her poem, and for being such a fabulous Assistant Art Editor. It was such a pleasure working with you, Carolyn! This issue is dedicated to Risa Denenberg. Thanks, Risa.

Mary Meriam, Editor
Lavender Review
December, 2013

ISSUE 8 - DANCE - CONTENTS

POETRY

ART

YVONNE RAINER A Manifesto Reconsidered JUDY GRAHN Ah Love, you smell of petroleum JOY LADIN Balance KATHRYN L. PRINGLE Querelle CARLA PETREE Anandharay's Thank You Note HANNAH BAKER-SIROTY That One Dream—the Quick of Me. Up Here Where the Heat Rises FLOWER CONROY Corporal Pleasance E. F. SCHRAEDER Government Cheese SEREE COHEN ZOHAR The Hair Cutter DEBRA REVERE Still Life with Woman and Birds DANIEL MELTZ Savannah RISA DENENBERG On leaving the barn door open LAURA DAVIES FOLEY I Go Down to the River VARIOUS POETS A Wall Flower

TRIO A Yvonne Rainer (1980-81) NJ WIGHT Carolyn Boll (1992) MARY ELLEN MARK Elizabeth Streb (2011) CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN LAVA (2013) EDDIE ENG Lauren Warnecke (2010) JEANNE MAMMEN Confusions (1928) ROSE CALLAHAN Anne Gadwa (2004) ANGELA JIMENEZ LAVA (2013) VALERIE OLIVEIRO Jennifer Monson (2012) NJ WIGHT Ireni Stamou (c. 1991) BRASSAI Montagne Sainte-Genevieve (c. 1930s) RICHARD LANDRY Lucinda Childs (1976) IAN DOUGLAS Stephanie Skura (2012-13) ALICE AUSTEN Children dancing (c. 1890s)

Yvonne Rainer's Manifesto

A Manifesto Reconsidered

---

Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Ranier

Dancer/Choreographer: Yvonne Rainer in “Trio A.” Photograph © 1980-81 The J. Paul Getty Trust. All rights reserved.

Judy Grahn

Ah Love, you smell of petroleum

Ah Love, you smell of petroleum
and overwork
with grease on your fingernails,
paint in your hair
there is a pained look in your eye
from no appreciation
you speak to me of the lilacs
and appleblossoms we ought to have
the banquets we should be serving
afterwards rubbing each other for hours
with tenderness and genuine
olive oil
someday. Meantime here is your cracked plate
with spaghetti. Wash your hands &
touch me, praise
my cooking. I shall praise your calluses,
we shall dance in the kitchen
of our imagination.



Judy Grahn, “Ah Love, you smell of petroleum” from love belongs to those who do the feeling: New & Selected Poems (1966-2006). Copyright © 2008 by Judy Grahn. Reprinted by permission of Judy Grahn and Red Hen Press.

---

Judy Grahn is one of the founders of lesbian, gay, and queer movements. Her first pro-lesbian article was published in 1966 in Sexology Magazine; yes, that is 45 years ago. Her memoir, A Simple Revolution: the Making of an Activist Poet, has been released by Aunt Lute Press. She teaches Women's Spirituality, her own theories and research, and writing and literature at Sofia University in Palo Alto, California. Journal.

Carolyn Boll by Nancie Wight

Dancer/Choreographer: Carolyn Boll in “Nope, This Ain't It.”
Photographer: © NJ Wight (1992)

Joy Ladin

Balance

It's always evening somewhere, and now the evening is mine.
Summer's over, I'm moving on,
the shuddering pans of the scale subside.
I didn't fail, I was right on time,
the perfect balance is undisturbed
by the angst still elbowing on either side.
I'm done with weighing and being weighed.  Goodbye!
I soar like a balloon a child let fly.
The little void I held inside
opens into sky.

---

Joy Ladin is the author of six books of poetry, including last year's The Definition of Joy, Lambda Literary Award finalist Transmigration, and Forward Fives award winner Coming to Life. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life, was a 2012 National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her work has appeared in many publications, including American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Southern Review, Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and North American Review, and has been recognized with a Fulbright Scholarship. She holds the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College of Yeshiva University.

Elizabeth Streb by Mary Ellen Mark

Choreographer Elizabeth Streb. Photographer: Mary Ellen Mark (2011)

kathryn l. pringle

Querelle

[After Schroeter]

the man might be naked
his torso is bending
he is slim and hairy

his hair isn’t bothering me, I’m just noticing
his torso is covered with dark hair

he is muscular

he has the posture of a dancer

he is making moves like he knows how to dance

he is smiling

he has that moustache

that gay moustache

from the 1970s

the women are on stage and the sailors are in love

with each other. one woman is dancing and another woman is holding a sword

in a crouched position. both women are on stage.

do they see each other? the sailors are in love.

they are kissing each other gazing

into the eyes of each other with love. one sailor is the dancer

with the moustache and the hairy torso. the other sailor is less hairy.

but I’m not sure

they are in sailor uniforms, hat and all, and each other’s arms

in the first chairs

in what are representative of the first of many chairs in the first of many rows

before the stage

you can see the woman dancer

she is dancing in the space between their mouths

she is dancing in the space behind their mouths, too

this is a very long scene.

the sailors come together and then, at arm’s length, they part to gaze

they are so happy

it is hard to know if the dancing woman has feelings about love

---

kathryn l. pringle is the author of fault tree (Omnidawn, 2011), selected by C.D. Wright for Omnidawn's First/Second book award & Lambda Literary Award finalist, RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY (Heretical Texts/Factory School, 2009) & The Stills (Duration Press). Her book, Temper & Felicity are Lovers won the 2013 Besmilr Brigham Award and will be published by Lost Roads Press in 2014. Her work has also been included in the anthologies Conversations at the Wartime Cafe: A Decade of War (WODV Press), I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues), and The Sonnets: Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat Books). In 2013, she was the very grateful recipient of a gift from the Fund for Poetry.

LAVA by Christopher Duggan

Dance: LAVA at Jacob's Pillow Inside/Out Stage.
Dancers (l to r): Lollo Romanski, Sarah Johnson, and Sarah Dey Hirshan.
Photographer: Christopher Duggan (2013)

Carla Petree

Anandharay's Thank You Note

Dance teacher, do you know you are a shoehorn for the soul?
slipping people into their purpose

You are changing my daughter’s life.
midwifing the moment in her choice where she swerves into wholeness

Of course you know.
cavorting with miracles and dancing a bridge between “want-to” and “can-do”

            you are the current of water-refreshment-destruction,
            like encouragement, rushing over the spirit design of others,
            nudging them, lifting them, cleansing, toppling, nourishing;
                        Rearranging inner landscapes with the power of your flow,
            lending odd and interesting spirit-joy-muscle-body detritus to the
            collage of their self chatter, and cambre.

You infuse *glitter*gold*shiny*sparks* quietly among her hopes, enlivening any movement
she makes, any at all,
beautifying even the bumbles, and stumbles, of swirling into her life.

thank you

---

Carla Petree lives near Pacifica, California enjoying coastal living with her kids and brilliant, green-eyed partner, Donna. She is a top 100 winner for the 80th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, Mainstream/Literary Short Story category for Giragmes Promise, awarded 61st place. Carla also contributed to 42 Magazine, including "Corin's 18th Birthday" and the "Upside Downside" column. Her poetry has appeared in The Sierra Club Yodeler and Lunatics Fringe. Carla dabbles in hermitage, with occasional written proof of her continued existence, such as this poem.

Lauren Warnecke by Eddie Eng

Dancer: Lauren Warnecke. Photographer: Eddie Eng. (2010)

Hannah Baker-Siroty

That One Dream—the Quick of Me.

She approaches me hurried, knows I need
skin. In this instant she must feel the pulse
of my flesh—breasts like clocks, only just
fully wound. The whole of me ticks,
says, not talk, not talk, dear god, just take.

---

Up Here Where the Heat Rises

I dance and my sweat clings—
stays between my breasts and under
wires. Up here, where the heat rises,

it also sticks: holds. So that
the memory of the sweat
and the sweat
are still the same thing
but cooling. Even in winter

this attic will be the hottest place.
It is only
if we make it so. Shake it so. Sway each hip—
and bend at the knee to it.  I am only
a dancer and what happens
up here is only music.

---

Hannah Baker-Siroty lives with her wife and daughter outside of Boston. She has degrees from University of Wisconsin-Madison and Sarah Lawrence College. Some of her poetry can be found in Best New Poets 2012, Cactus Heart and Each Moment a Mountain. She is an Assistant Professor of writing at Pine Manor College and when she can find the time, she is working on a series of poems about the Vice-Presidents of the United States. Learn more about Hannah here.

Jeanne Mammen

Jeanne Mammen, Confusions (1928)

Flower Conroy

Corporal Pleasance

Crop of warped shadows: skullcap—lungwort—heart-
wood—& bleeding heart.  I invite you in… suspires
the monoecious garden, offspring of paradise.
Her wicked entrails mushroom succulents,
belladonnas, splinter flowers.  Amidst the slow-gulping
fringe-mouths of Venus flytraps,
she peels back the layers of her perfect skin.  Witness
the thistles’ subtle dance.  Cry of cherry jubilee.
Some believe the forbidden fruit, she plucks
a planetary orb mantled in gray fuzz, was not apple,
but quince.  I bite astringent meat & fall
back into a cocoon of leaves but not before
a thorn—with its single, deft stroke—like the opening
of a letter—fingernails my cheek.

---

The poetry of Flower Conroy has appeared in numerous literary journals including Serving House Journal, BlazeVox, Saw Palm, American Literary Review, Psychic Meatloaf, Cliterature, and others. She is an only child and a Pisces and her favorite color is green. Originally from New Jersey, she now lives in Key West, FL.

Anne Gadwa by Rose Callahan

Dancer/Choreographer: Anne Gadwa in “I Dream of Monster Babies.” Photographer: Rose Callahan (2004)

E.F. Schraeder

Government Cheese

I come from a long line of loud dressers, masters of
second-hand cool reinvention in paisley shirts,
checked sweaters, and striped pants.

So if it’s true that we, my family and I, weren’t poor
it’s in the same way that later I wasn’t homeless.
It’s a matter of surface attention, directed awareness.

I slipped between friendly couches, a queer kid
without a home. I learned denial like that
from Mom. She emptied illusions in her free time:

poured samples into larger shampoo bottles, softened
soap shavings with water into batches of liquid
cleanser to rinse away our hidden poverty.

I knew who I was, backpack slung over one arm
clomping out of the house. We are two versions of a story
that end the same. Even alienated, I am half of her.

I learned to need less, become my own brand.
Half of what we are is accident, luck. The other, creativity.
To have enough of everything, we practiced frugality:

laughed at the gooey, artery clogging, bright yellow brick
we nibbled with crackers. Maybe ironically,
but we ate it.

---

E.F. Schraeder creative work has appeared in Haz Mat Review, On the Issues, The Kennedy Curse, Kicked Out, Blue Collar Review, Corvus Magazine, and other anthologies and journals. Her poetry chapbook, The Hunger Tree, was released in 2013 from Finishing Line Press. She holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in the humanities and wears a questionable amount of paisley.

LAVA by Angela Jimenez

Dance: LAVA The Rocks at BAM - Sidewalk.
Photographer: Angela Jimenez (2013)

Seree Cohen Zohar

The Hair Cutter

A pitcher full of night.
There is no footfall
as loud as a footfall hushed.
Itchy words. Your lips part.
A slip of silk of silk of silk slips.
Will you wake me?
Between us
a wedge of moon bitters.
Will you wake?
At the edge of the world
the pitcher trips,
the desert hugs the slivers,
your lips close.

---

Seree Cohen Zohar’s writing, influenced by Australia’s landscapes, and by two decades of farming in Israel, has appeared or is forthcoming in local and international venues. Recently she collaborated with Alan Sullivan on a new versified translation of Psalms-of-King-David. A fav’rit activity is foisting flash-recipes on her unsuspecting family, the result of the consuming lure of words and the computer.

Jennifer Monson by Valerie Oliveiro

Dancer/Choreographer: Jennifer Monson in “Live Dancing Archive”. Photographer: Valerie Oliveiro (2012)

Debra Revere

Still Life with Woman and Birds
                                (for my mother)

I
She talks to the birds. In twos and threes they come
for seeds scattered below her windowsill, for
small cups she fills with water
every day. In a chair she watches as they break
back and forth, a blur of glistening
blacks and browns, yellow beaks,
shooting down to grab, squabble, fly away.
She talks to the birds from her chair in the kitchen
until the ground is empty, the water gone.

II
The telephone is in my kitchen. She tells me
how surprised she was today, a cardinal
flew straight at her! Its shoulders
slick with the air.
It was that close.

III
In her dreams they come on silent flight.
She feels the wind fluttering as they pass
in the dim light overhead.
        They are hungry.
She tosses seed into the air. Birds swoop
with mouths open, again and again,
but still they are hungry.
She feeds them, feeds them
until her arm aches, she wants to lie down.
        She is tired, tired.

The hum of working wings fades.
Softly, quietly they settle in a circle
around her. Gathering on the ground
they lay their wings down,
surrounding her with sleep.

---

Debra Revere is a Research Scientist and Clinical Faculty working in the field of biomedical and public health informatics at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. She is widely published in her field in which her research focuses on understanding the information needs of public health. Debra has been writing poetry since she was 9 years old. Her first poem was published in the Lawrenceville Elementary School newspaper, an ode to the Easter Bunny. This is her second published poem.

Ireni Stamou by NJ Wight

Dancer/Choreographer: Ireni Stamou in “Le Metamorphose d'une Dent de Lion.”
Photographer: © NJ Wight (c. 1991)

Daniel Meltz

Savannah

Our love began in a petri dish no
father or mother and the fertilized
form uncurled in a series of
surrogate condos with views up a
boulevard lined with live oaks from
a window as big as a Motherwell on
the 22nd floor. Our love was born on
a dancefloor in Canada, our love said
nothing, still doesn’t talk much, stupid
but playful, leaning in against each
other like gourds on a porch, with a
knocking sound and an echo that squishes.
Our love needed school, got some lousy
grades and is still behind the others,
is failing some of its subjects (math
and shop) but does decent in English
and geography and is still of course our
love.

---

Daniel Meltz lives in Manhattan, between a beauty parlor and a nail salon. He works as a technical writer at Google, and his poetry's been published or will soon be published in American Poetry Review, Assisi, Audio Zine, Best New Poets 2012, CCAR Journal, Imitation Fruit, Lana Turner, Mudfish, Salamander, Temenos, upstreet and Verse Wisconsin, among others. He has a BA in English from Columbia.

Brassaï

Brassaï, Couples at a working-class dance hall in Paris, Montagne Sainte-Genevieve (c. 1930s)

Risa Denenberg

On leaving the barn door open

In 1994, when Leonard Cohen danced me to the end
then split
and holed up for six years
on Mount Baldy, afraid of losing nothing,
which he never found,

I missed him as sorely as I missed my son,
kidnapped from my arms, the women who’ve left me loveless,
J’s amethyst ring lost on a Greyhound bus.

I've compressed my losses
by leaning on imagery and verse,
by my own version of hermitude,
by renouncing ordinary eros.

It's the slight headache, the worry
I've lived the wrong life, the fear
of not being able to fill my days with thoughts
the fear of not being able to stop thoughts
the thought itself, like a scalpel

carving into white matter saying,
This here is an irreversible mistake.
There will be no do-overs.

I'll limp through two more
decades with no conjugation
of any sort.

---

Risa Denenberg is an aging hippie poet currently living in the Pacific Northwest. She earns her keep as a nurse practitioner. Along with Mary Meriam, she is a mistress at Headmistress Press, dedicated to publishing lesbian poetry. She has two chapbooks, what we owe each other (The Lives You Touch Publications, 2013) and Blinded by Clouds (forthcoming, Hyacinth Girls Press) and a full-length book, Mean Distance from the Sun (Aldrich Press, 2013).

Lucinda Childs by Richard Landry

Dancer/Choreographer: Lucinda Childs (r) in “Einstein on the Beach.” Photographer: Richard Landry (1976)

Laura Davies Foley

I Go Down to the River

After making love with a woman

for the first time ever,

I go down to the river where I grew up

and touch it, for the first time ever,

dipping my fingers in the chill East River,

tasting salt from the sea,

as boat-waves flow toward me,

washing over my ankles,

as black-tipped seagulls circle my head.

---

Laura Davies Foley is the author of three poetry collections, The Glass Tree, Syringa and Mapping the Fourth Dimension. The Glass Tree won the Foreword Book of the Year Award, Silver, and is a Finalist for the New Hampshire Writer’s Project, Outstanding Book of Poetry 2013. Her new manuscript, Night Ringing, was a Finalist for the 2013 Autumn House Poetry Prize. A volunteer chaplain and creative arts facilitator in hospitals, she divides her time between Pomfret, Vermont and Cornish, New Hampshire with her partner Clara Gimenez and their three dogs.

Stephanie Skura

Dancer/Choreographer: Stephanie Skura in “Sacrilege is Needed. Competency is Hell.” Photographer: Ian Douglas.
From Skura’s 2012-13 solo performed in December 2012 at the Danspace Project in NYC as part of the Judson at 50 Celebration.

A Wall Flower

Amy Levy (1861-1889)

I lounge in the doorway and languish in vain
While Tom, Dick and Harry are dancing with Jane

My spirit rises to the music’s beat;
There is a leaden fiend lurks in my feet!
To move unto your motion, Love, were sweet.

Somewhere, I think, some other where, not here,
In other ages, on another sphere,
I danced with you, and you with me, my dear.

In perfect motion did our bodies sway,
To perfect music that was heard alway;
Woe's me, that am so dull of foot to-day!

To move unto your motion, Love, were sweet;
My spirit rises to the music’s beat--
But, ah, the leaden demon in my feet!

---

from Breaking Open
Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980)

A dream remembered only in other dreams.
The voice saying:
All you dreaded as a child
Came to pass in storms of light;
All you dreaded as a girl
Falls and falls in avalanche—
Dread and the dream of love will make
All that time and men may build,
All that women dance and make.
They become you.         Your own face
Dances through the night and day,
Leading your body into this
Body-led dance, its mysteries.
Answer me.         Dance my dance.

---

The Baby's Dance
Ann Taylor (1782–1866)

Dance little baby, dance up high,
Never mind baby, mother is by ;
Crow and caper, caper and crow,
There little baby, there you go ;
Up to the ceiling, down to the ground,
Backwards and forwards, round and round ;
Dance little baby, and mother shall sing,
With the merry coral, ding, ding, ding.

---

Farewell to Bath
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762)

To all you ladies now at Bath,
       And eke, ye beaux, to you,
With aching heart, and wat’ry eyes,
       I bid my last adieu.

Farewell ye nymphs, who waters sip
       Hot reeking from the pumps,
While music lends her friendly aid,
       To cheer you from the dumps.

Farewell ye wits, who prating stand,
       And criticise the fair;
Yourselves the joke of men of sense,
       Who hate a coxcomb's air.

Farewell to Deard's, and all her toys,
       Which glitter in her shop,
Deluding traps to girls and boys,
       The warehouse of the fop.

Lindsay’s and Hayes’s both farewell,
       Where in the spacious hall,
With bounding steps, and sprightly air,
       I've led up many a ball.

Where Somerville of courteous mien,
       Was partner in the dance,
With swimming Haws, and Brownlow blithe,
       And Britton pink of France.

Poor Nash, farewell! may fortune smile,
       Thy drooping soul revive,
My heart is full I can no more—
       John, bid the coachman drive.

Alice Austen

Alice Austen, Children dancing at Women's club (c. 1890s). Courtesy of the Alice Austen House.