I Want to Give You the Lines
Happy National Poetry Month from Stance on Dance!
BY SEBASTIAN GRUBB; ILLUSTRATION BY CAMILLE TAFT
I want to give you the lines
from my palms,
give you the twisting circuitry
of my heart,
the music
of valves with blood rushing through,
the flutter
of eyelashes brushing skin;
give you lock of hair,
brown and curled like brambles
or like ocean’s splashing
and currents meeting currents;
give you half moon of ear,
lobes like petals,
close to neck that drops
as cliff-face to collarbone shores;
give you rib ridges and belly button –
a secret hiding place; give you eye’s protecting brow,
hip’s blade and arcing wing
like angels lifting legs;
give you sacrum’s cup and shield,
ankle’s importance, foot’s arch,
holding you high;
give you shell-of-my-back,
a thin shield to keep
wind and sand rushing by
and away, give you flesh and bone
to let them go.
Sebastian Grubb is a contemporary dancer, choreographer and teacher, and runs Sebastian’ss Functional Fitness, an outdoor fitness program based in San Francisco. Learn more at www.sebastiangrubb.com.
Camille Taft is a seventeen-year-old dancer living in Longmont, CO, who has trained throughout her life in primarily ballet and modern dance. With both her parents as visual artists, she has always appreciated the excitement that comes from a collaboration of mixed media, and was thus overjoyed to have the opportunity to work with Stance on Dance.