The Women’s Waltz

—1—
The day overwhelms us with insight into grey. The women survive.
Their chins expand to stubblefields, and the furrows of their eyes
draw closed. In their neglect, these bodies are left to love themselves.

—2—
In fitful sleep inside small cells, time recedes: ethyl-red dripped over
flesh corrodes childhood dreams, drills drone and cigarettes singe grey
skin thinned from years of rape locked in a room. I am here to witness

—3—
the uncanny questions cumbersome bodies pose and answer. Motion
flushes scars; mute mouths like thin knife wounds deliquesce in cold air.
Armed with movement, we are prepared to endure, to perform ourselves:

—Coda—
the women labor to give birth to their body parts before the hour is over.

The Other World

L is a preschooler who wants to play “London Bridge” and all fall
down on the yellow linoleum where no nurses can see us.
If the doctors notice, they will order their staff to kidnap and trap
her inside the body of an old woman they keep locked in
the psychiatric ward. L treasures memories of nursery school—
swirling finger paints, slipping through Swiss cheese, rolling down
the dandelion hill—before God comes with a man who attacks her
in the groin, licks her blood away, drills holes in her hands and dips
his fingers in the waxen wounds. The men take her parents away.
Their bodies gone, they live in the other world now.

That is where L wants to go, too. Giraffes roam the other world,
and there are no drills. Just impossibly beautiful creatures
with vulnerably long necks. We dance together until the cages crash
down, her first visit to the zoo so long anticipated. We wiggle our tails,
flex and stretch our claws, sensing the wind on each thick tuft
between calloused yet sensitive pads. We drink the air and listen
with our tongues, howl and flick water from matted fur,
growl, snort, sneeze, then break to blow human noses. L giggles,
enthralled by blue butterflies. One brushes the clock face; the time
to go has passed. As the hour chimes, L collapses with a wail,
clinging to my leg. She begs to leave with me so she will not be
the only furry creature in this hospital corridor, the wrong world
of windowless, concrete cages.

I cannot take her home without being terminated or locked
in a prison cell, but I consider it anyway. I imagine asking Kevin,
I know you would like a child. Would you adopt a four-year-old girl
who appears to be in her fifties and has trouble with fears
and sleeping? She likes to be strolled and pushed on the swings.
Kevin would say yes. I cannot take her and she knows,
yet she is so desperate she heaves herself at the metal doorframe.
As two stoic nurses block her path, L sobs, tremoring in despair,
Lake, please don’t abandon me this way.

The Professionals*

(Dr. W’s laughter spills into the daily meeting room. In the corridor her
voice wears its strong Romanian accent like a cloak, soothing the women
on her ward. She rustles by with a bottle of bright polish she has brought
to paint B’s gnarled nails, the yellowed fronds shaking in her lap.)

SOCIAL WORKER 2: (slams the door on this vulgar scene, snarling):
I don’t like female doctors. Men make better physicians.

THERAPIST 1: (joins in the praise of men, extending her criticism
of women beyond these hospital grounds): This Me-Too movement
has gone too far. Now we’re expected not to say what we all really think.

DOCTOR 2: (nods, his expression grave, a freshly chiseled headstone):
The girls on the unit are asking for trouble. Only men should be allowed
to wear short pants.

DOCTOR 1: Yes, look at S strutting around in those skanky shorts.
Such a whore—I told her, if one of those guys rapes you, you deserve it.

SOCIAL WORKER 1: Good for you. I wanted to say the same thing.

THERAPIST 2: I hope she learns her lesson.

LAKE: (interjects) I see other patients wearing shorts—

(Before the dance therapist can say anything more in defense of that slut,
the PROFESSIONALS correct her): Well, the men are not peacocking
around for sex.

SOCIAL WORKER 1: That’s right, she just wants one thing when she
wears those trashy shorts.

DOCTOR 2: And she has those nasty, hairy legs. Disgusting.

(The PROFESSIONALS laugh at the funny double standards.
They know that even if she wanted to shave, her razor is locked away
with her rights.)

(B, always in her best, low-cut dress, resumes pacing the hallway,
head lowered in shame because the doctors have noticed, with the glint
of écraseur chains in their eyes, her tongue swollen silent
and the stubble sprouting on her chin.)

*Excerpted from a manuscript informed by the poet’s work as a dance therapist in a state psychiatric hospital: Scivias Choreomaniae.

Lake Angela is a poet, translator, and dancer-choreographer who creates at the confluence of verbal language and movement. She holds a PhD in the intersemiotic translation of Austrian Expressionist poetry into dance and has her MFA in poetry. She is a medieval mystic, beguine, and nonhuman creature. Her books, Organblooms (2020) and Words for the Dead (2021), are available from FutureCycle Press. Lake is poetry editor for the international journal Punt Volat. As director of the poetry-dance group Companyia Lake Angela, she presents the value of schizophrenia spectrum creativity. She invites visitors to www.lakeangeladance.com.