PORTRAIT OF THE CLUMSY LEARNING HOW TO DANCE

“Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles

are the same.” – Martha Graham

In a room, at night, with the woman I trust, I can be

anything. Forget windows. Forget the lamp’s light

& how it can be guided to form a perfect circle.

Forget the clothes I haven’t washed lumped stinking

in the corner & the way an onlooker is only one

struck by the stark appearance of a life that isn’t his.

Forget rhythm. Forget all you were told about history.

I am a boy & I am a body. When she says extend

your leg outward, I become a heron, a hero, a heroine

balancing atop the bloom of water – another word

for world. When she says balance, I try first

to imagine myself as a feeling caught on her

tongue, a night in that mist of becoming, where all light

seems to be going away but is only just travelling

a longer distance to arrive, bringing with it a basket

of oranges, as if to say I’m sorry for being so late. I balance

on her tongue the same way I balance on the floor –

shakily, wearing nothing but my underwear,

only skin & sinew teetering. What I am trying to say is

I want to be spoken & I want to be spoken to.

She sits cross-legged on the bed & stifles the first sound

of a laugh. Is it too much to ask for the sound of forever

to be the sound of a lip curling upward? It is possible

to be afraid & still be in love, to balance on one foot

when you haven’t balanced before, to stare for so long

at someone else that you invent new words made up

of only vowels & the softest consonants. Everyone

has lilacs for eyes. Dancing is hard. I can be anything

when I am given the space to fail. The laughter is real now.

I am a twirl spent of its grace. A pirouette staggered

for the viewing. A leap with no hang time. Overcome

by gravity. In the corner of the middle school dance floor.

No, I’m not hiding. Yes, I am sometimes made

more joyful by embarrassment. All at once the color

of roses. I am the lopsided mess of a child’s self portrait.

I am an oval. I am a lump. I am the too-long, forever

short journey of someone dying. I am longing

to be held. I am laughing, too. I am reaching for her body.

Good, she says, you’re a natural. The night pours in like a liquid,

a friend you haven’t seen in years. There is a moon

& it sometimes feels so much closer than we know it is.

On those nights, it’s best to believe in promises.

Like how I promise it is possible to fail & still find beauty

in the bent limb – almost breaking – but not yet. Like how

it is possible to laugh & cry at the same time, to invent

words with no prior meaning, to surrender & feel safe.

Devin Kelly earned his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and co-hosts the Dead Rabbits Reading Series

New York City. He is the author of two collaborative chapbooks as well as the books Blood on Blood

(Unknown Press), and In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen (forthcoming 2017, CCM). He edits for

Full Stop, works as an afterschool director in Queens, teaches at the City College of New York, and lives in

Harlem.