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 First published in Overland Issue 228 1 June 20231 June 2023 · Politics Turning peaceful protesters into criminals—again Evan Smith So the Summary Offences (Obstruction of Public Places) Bill 2023 has been passed by South Australia’s Legislative Assembly and will become law. Fifteen hours of debate in the upper house, led by the Greens and SA Best, could not overturn the bill that was reportedly rushed through the lower house in just twenty-two minutes a fortnight ago. First published in Overland Issue 228 31 May 202331 May 2023 · Film In Memoriam: Kenneth Anger’s cinematic incantations Eloise Ross ‘Making a movie is casting a spell,’ said Kenneth Anger about his lifelong profession, his unique and spectacular talent, his very own dark magic. That certainly describes how I was lured into his realm. There was a time in my life where I would watch Anger’s seven-minute film Rabbit’s Moon basically on repeat, infatuated by its blue-tinted images of a sprightly harlequin dancing around a clearing and calling silently to the moon. It was poetry.