“The Negro dance . . . is a rhythm of disintegration . . .”
said Martha Graham
and we all know
the alcoholic white modernists
of last century
were oracles and
how I wish it weren’t true
(the disintegration part)
and yes I often find it hard to find equilibrium
and my arabesque
lacks a certain poetic quality
though I do not self-deprecate
or need remind myself
that god made all of this
I am still sculpture
and consider
I was a man of forty before I danced in pointe shoes
heard the ballet teacher say
“Let the weight hang off you and on your ankles like your pelvis is lifted on a silver tray and like your head is hovering with the weight of a celestial crown or so help me, your neck from a noose”
I give the illusion of floating
when I’m in free fall
from the vantage point of the audience
I look like I’m flying
but from this vantage point of me
passed out on the floor
looking
upside down
what could not be imagined
or dreamed into existence
I sometimes mistake streetlights
for the moon
or a stage light
as epiphany
like the Hanged Man I am Major Arcana
I hang myself out of a self-inflicted predicament
I see the world from a new perspective
and don’t cry for me when you see me on the floor
I am basking in
my celestialness
would you believe
that I am happy?
Every day
the scorched me reintegrates
and learns how to talk and walk again and again and again
and over and over
it’s all episodic
two nooses pull me
from my crown and my foot
it’s giving erect posture
and I’ve nothing to fear
for I am held together by spine and not glue
I do this dance every goddamn day
my golden posture
remains earned
Excerpted from TEN BRIDGES I’VE BURNT: A Memoir in Verse by Brontez Purnell, published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2024 by Brontez Purnell. All rights reserved.
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Brontez Purnell
Brontez Purnell is the author of several books, most recently Ten Bridges I've Burnt and 100 Boyfriends, the latter of which won the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction, was long-listed for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and was named an Editors’ Choice by The New York Times Book Review. The recipient of a Whiting Award for Fiction and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers and a renowned performance artist and zine-maker. Born in Triana, Alabama, he lives in Oakland, California.