Published in Overland Issue 229 Summer 2017 · Uncategorized Serenade Jessica L Wilkinson Choreography: George Balanchine Music: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Wide open chords raise a blue night on the orange grove of crossed lines. We angle towards metaphor, as if art travels deeper through weird parallel: arms might be branches; a waltz persuades tenderness; that fallen woman has had too many affairs. Familiar tales lead us wide of the stage, gazing at craters on Mercury’s surface. What if we could see only dancers in motion to the music’s story? The arms move first, the feet will follow, picking up speed con spirito – this is a beginner’s lesson in stage technique. Observe kaleidoscopic particles, propelled through soft diagonal and peeling off, always resisting the poet’s remark. Can we keep up without the direction of stars, pulled firm into the orbit of a muscle’s tone? We must learn quickly to absorb the sweeping strings, the skewed vocabulary, these floating experiments in numerical design. There are no secrets here: accidents prove able punctuation in a current of urgent women, each one stretching hard toward light. Read the rest of Overland 229 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Jessica L Wilkinson Jessica L Wilkinson’s latest book of poetry is Music Made Visible: A Biography of George Balanchine (Vagabond Press, 2019). She is the managing editor of Rabbit and an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at RMIT University. More by Jessica L Wilkinson › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 18 December 202418 December 2024 · Nakata Brophy Prize Dawning in the rivulet of my father’s mourning Yasmin Smith My father floats words down Toonooba each morning. They arrive to me by noon. / Nothing diminishes in his unfolding, not even the currents in midwinter June. / He narrates the sky prehistorically like a cadence cutting him into deluge. 16 December 202416 December 2024 · Palestine Learning to see in the dark Alison Martin Images can represent a splice of reality from the other side of the world, mirror truths about ourselves and our collective humanity we can hardly bear to face. But we can also use them to recognise the patterns of dehumanisation that have manifested throughout history, and prevent their awful conclusions in the present. To rewrite in real time our most shameful histories before they are re-made on the world stage and in our social media feeds.
