Tiana Clark
Two POEMS
AFTER APOLLO
PAS DE DEUX WITH TERPSICHORE
Their flexed index fingers delicately click
(and breathe) together the fluid dance begins
as if GodandAdam are closing in—
There is so much delightful prosody (all white)
in the middle of her lustrous, muscled legs
swaying over the golden head of God.
Three times Apollo takes her petite wrist, dips
her down toward the smooth and continuous
earth spilling the muse like a porcelain cup
pouring more cream on cream
back grounded by a stage of Prussian blue: steely
arrows inside the storm-colored eyes of Apollo.
This god lifts her again over his clavicle and she
is draped against his back like warm bath water
poured over and streaming down the knotted spine
as Stravinsky’s strings stretch and vibrate—
the wooden cavity of other instruments.
How the dancers make a frothy waterfall
of each other’s Caucasian bodies. (All adagio)
Calliope, Polyhymnia, and Balanchine are offstage
No one is talking here— Apollo was just born
and now she is rearing the child inside of him.
With her back to me she sits on the trunk
of his legs and offers him her liquid gifts
through the wet and taut positions of ballet,
shows him how she splits herself
(as I have) again and again
for such a gorgeous, foolish God.
AFter Orpheus
PAS DE DEUX WITH EURYDICE
The son of Apollo has no voice here—
only the music of Stravinsky’s symphony.
The dancers sing with their unbolted bodies,
wholly lengthened and phantasmagoric.
The Dark Angel leads him through the lyre,
through unfolding underworld—his hand:
another type of lung, breathing. Balanchine
wanted the audience to see each finger splayed
and reaching, extended. But when the anxious
Orpheus tears off his mask, the ballerina collapses
for the floor. The curtain billows and the oboes
are gone. I think about patience and its stupid song.
I can’t wait— Yes, I’m always looking back
at my dead.
Tiana Clark is the author of the chapbook Equilibrium, selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. She is the winner of the 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize and 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. Tiana is currently an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Indiana Review, Muzzle Magazine, The Journal, and elsewhere. Find her online at tianaclark.com.