I looked for the exit, found a sleeve


A long poem and performance piece interpreted by flamenco dancer Katherine McLeod, I looked for the exit, found a sleeve is a ritual for a time in my life when I began to ask questions about my gender. The poem serves as the score for the dance, which is twenty-eight minutes long.

Moving from the intimate to the global and back again, the piece attends to the ways in which personal information belongs to and affects all living systems—from bacteria to insects to human bodies in and out of love to international politics—and listens for the edges, the points at which an unravelling could begin.

(excerpt)

In the haywire time my attention
was called to small things for example
the moths that had been eating my clothes
for two years, to the point that I did not have much to wear
except polyester blends
which are very ancient
bugs and plants and larger
animals subjected to unimaginable pressure
then woven.