What happens to a woman on stage ?

What does she hear? From the crowd, from backstage, in her head, the past, voices, selves —- does her father call?
Can she hear me? 
How loud is my gaze?

In this state of Venus, I find myself loving the shape of myself in shadow.  A spotlight misaligned, a cast off part of me. I offer you a platter of amputated bits, all of it too much. Add another layer, another shadow. Watch my fingers dance and spiral.


Man makes machine and woman’s voice falls, clean, over the floor. Black Miss would you please, sing your woes in color and awe. Cover the Earth with ache and let me wear it with you.

I watch women on stage.  Admire them too. 

What draws me to the drama of this draped cloth? I layer portraits of distortion. Cast characters. Hide me in the dark of these sheets. I want to watch a purple sunrise from the warmth of your side.  Shield yourself in the covers — fill your mouth with the words of another: tributes, transition, an offer of translation.


Fall in love with an instance and get your heart broken by something bigger than you.  Run away, fall out in the starlit space of another world.  Carry your burden up rivers and retrace a lineage tangled in the branches of foreign trees. Seas! Bathe in them. Soak your blues in the sky and dance with the mirrored phantoms in the clouds.  Make meals from the heat of that burn’s scar. Follow it, gather,  turn back around—slip and slide downstream in the chaos of surrender. 

Two generations ago I was a seed in your stomach.  These broken things inside, shards passed from the womb.  Mama gave me a boombox and they gave me a prize, an honor for a Ward––a grammy––how long do you have to go on proving your insanity for the makers of sane to welcome your wonder into a new category of praise?

Oh the castles they put me in to dream.  Put me up high and tell me to sing: Venus! Venus! 

Venus.
Creativity. Creation. Woman. Love. Connection. Beauty. Pleasure. 
Art.


Maybe I love women because the men around me never knew how to share. Never knew how to leave enough of me behind.

What happens to a black woman on stage?

Does she become responsible for her words? Must she mother their interpretation, nurse the want they conjure? How about when she calls for revolution? For you to raise your arms and shout. Will you stand close? Will you protect her when they start to conspire?

Let me wail for a world not yet weeping. Mourn the material you sought: sovereign security solvent to crime.

Venus, teach me about envy. What can you say of jealousy? How can we look at each other with our own eyes? Take me back a continent and place a new language in my mouth. An old god, married waters, and a drum beat I heard in the water.

Wander round the world and become a daughter of the Earth. How could we not talk about our bodies? These vessels, space of contents. We live here.  Here. In this flesh. Feel the reflection, the waves that ripple your back. That thud of time. 

We are the ones who cradle, who wrestle with our grief and fall out in laughter, tuck it in to bed with us, make a home in this mourning. Morning comes and grief wakes and walks alongside us. The pain full companionship that makes this voice reverberate with enough depth to dance. 


Do it.  Buy a ticket to see the beautiful woman sing sad songs on stage with dramatic lighting. Scream and shout. Shake and dance and put your arms in the air. Close your eyes and listen. Move. Be moved. 

Heartbreak comes around and makes its offer. So I break up with the world. I mourn myself. Now I taste circles in my grief. Dance the loop and celebrate the cycle.  I hold myself as a composite.

 I am chrysalis and crystal. Star made from sugar. Sweet and brittle. Hard and mean.

I like to say I was radicalized by my grief.  That mourning rendered the world in violet reds and brilliant blues. And so when I wail the blues now know it is not defeat. We dance in the ash. Press the charcoal into the earth with our bare toes because we know this too makes for good food. I will make sweet of the tartest sour and feed it to my loves letting the sugar drip sticky on their tongues. Never could a voyeur keep me from this pleasure. In the steam of compost, chaos, it all churns and undos and dies. That great trick: the end of beginnings. beginnings that end. story that starts only because of what surrendered the space. the seamless transition. to know the constant is change. metamorphosis. Passage.

What happens?
They burn brilliant purple. 
Bruised from the press of a thousand skies, they turn cosmic.