Hopefully, this will be the last time when I have to make up for one “skipped” day in the NaPoWriMo scheme.
For yesterday’s poem in Sapphics, a sequence inspired by this rather uncanny 1951 New Yorker cover:
Stage Fright
With a jump, the monster was there, beside her:
in their seats, the viewers were dancing shadows,
her ballet transformed into danse macabre
in less than a second.
Lips upturned, the curtains fell down in silence –
all the songs had changed into gruesome dirges –
turned away, the hands had no more applauses
to counter the stage fright.
And now, for today’s prompt to describe a favourite thing, I decided upon a favourite scene from a favourite movie: the dance scene in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. (Yes, somehow both poems ended up withe dance as their main theme.)
Brigitte Helm as Maschinenmensch
Her hips twist
on an impossible orbit
cutting the air like blades
grating the edge off time.
Every man’s shoulder
is a throne
for her heel
and when she puts
her foot down
she is unapologetic
she means
to leap and bite.
Neck thrust forward
she is a bird
crowned with the bones
of her ancestors.
Thin, flat
and sharp
she pulls down the divide.
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 