Black Swan
Black pink. Cake nail. & camera dances it, too. Lights again. Slender women
in unison, specific as wicks in the center. Aronofsky, Tchaikovsky, & the
crunch of feathered necks between boot heel & permafrost. Glass caught in
the breathing gauze, the bleeding gauze, the seething audience: awe to you, awe
to you.
In the beginning of The Rest of Love, Carl Phillips opens his “Custom” with
There is a difference it used to make / seeing three swans in this versus four in that /
quadrant of sky. It’s partially a footnote on disciplined study, attentive devotion
as prison or road north. Pale princess of the quadrant of reticent labor, versus
dark mistress of violence & leisure. The camera dances to compensate for
imperfection in both.
Swan song: the black pink of vanities, electric daybreak. The specific splendor
of sauntering waifs with cigarettes & Vincent Cassel. (Y’all just be casting men
like what the hell.) When Nina leaps out of labor into freedom, her violence
blossoms.
Without drama, writes Phillips, what is ritual? The fingernail to Nina’s skin is
Thomas’s tongue in her mouth is
her mother at the keyhole is
Lily’s face at her pelvis is
the something in her drink is
the nail file in Beth’s face, over & over, is
the quill her rash surfaces is
the shard in her wound, flexing over & over. What is ritual? For the intrusion
of suitors in unison; for the 17 men who write, direct, & produce; for the
mad queen painter who keeps her muse under lock & must be loved: cake &
champagne for celebrations.
The night again. The light again. The light it didn’t happen, Nina leaping out of
Nina. But touches herself via hero plate, intimacy after green screen. Give her
the Oscar for feeling distress at omens she can’t even see on her flesh. Race
feeling, that’s a hangnail. They are everywhere to be found. Black pink of sun
setting & the silhouettes that liberate white women from their mirrors.
“Melanin in feathers strengthens them against wear.” We, oh, where? The
weirdest sisters IRL, & there, when her neck stretches into rope.
Lose yourself to your dark contrary in the mise en abyme of conquest.
We think feeling is pink. Without black feeling, what is drama? Every genre of
revelation is wearing my face. I am not imagining. I’m paying attention. What
attention pays for has yet to be imagined.
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