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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…

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September 2019

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