PLEIONE SHALL I?
Performance at Ox-Bow School of Art
3435 Rupprecht Way, Saugatuck, MI
Jul. 2018
Total run time variable.
Pleione Shall I? was a spatial play in three acts. It was developed and performed at Ox-Bow with the guidance of Paula Wilson.
Act I was a welded steel spiral structure with a fabric piece and audio recording.
Act II was a live reading of the same text between two trees.
Act III was a rock circle, where participants discussed what had just transpired.
A painted portrait of a woman's face, a guardian spirit, accompanied each act.
Pleione shall I shoulder your skin?
Tooth sore and aching marrow
too many, too long have your eyes been open
the bee in sweetwater alight with its stinger
Plea, a plea to no days without
Go ‘round to return but I never remembered
the agelong promise, that Mobius strip
there again backwards, here now once more
Pleione, please, a moment too narrow
I’ve squeezed my great thighs and purged the foul smoke
like your words cut oh so cuttingly close
and split into shards for the light to bemoan
To ride with me follow me into the core
though the way is shaded, thorned
silver glow bent at orthogonal angles
a lattice – no body – they sigh they throw roses
What better? What better? No one for eternity!
but Pleione my dear for them trees do not grow
Follow me follow me to drink by good groves
Drink by good groves and mumbling green
A cord woven tight, a ladder sans increment
falls to us here for we’ve been here before
and never have rootbearers called out so sharply
nor nerves thrown fire scarlet into gaping holes
A lift, some give, a push, no a pull
Pleione Pleione care for the edges!
turned rough turned rough were smooth long ago
for your whistling waters had formed a shelf, a floor
Now high falls lie desiccate, stretched to far bounds
and lambs grown and quartered to be swallowed up whole
to have knotted them together and reoriented toward home
the task would have been a good one, no?
Resuming our search, our palms cupped still empty
We sing to medley gods and cradle dark portions
Pleione, you’re weary, I’ve read the inscriptions
and decoded the thirty-ruled cloth you abhor
If one comes and one comes and one comes then none
And if one comes but one comes and none shows then one
We bartered for affections most beautiful toils
but your salts accumulated row upon row
Merope, Sterope, true faith hath befallen
the crowns of your root beds now float up to sow
to pluck, to crease, you worried a storm
and all of that time I was here taking note
A turnip so fleetingly drawn up to sow
A turnip so fleetingly drawn up to sow
Your beds selling noontimes and no times for sorrows
I’ve written you loveliness for morrows for bone
