By Anne Boyer, from A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, a collection of essays that was published in May by Ugly Duckling Presse. Boyer is a poet and essayist. She received a 2018 Whiting Award.
I’ve only watched it once. First there are Missy Elliott’s mortuary metaphors; then the mining lights on the dancers’ heads; then Missy is in a hivelike palace of graves, of honeycombs, of vertical scaffolding made horizontal; and then there are the plastic bags. Maybe a plastic bag is a kite in situ. Maybe a kite is an escape in situ. Maybe an escape is a…