Restraint
Opaque rooms fall in line behind four sets of metal doors
and twice the number of locks and keys. From the stale gray
cloud appears the imposing metal chair with weighted leather
straps for head, neck, wrists, waist, ankles, and two solitary feet.
The ground is graced with scuffs from shoes with laces removed,
scarlet nail polish scabs left by strangled bare toes thrashing
after the grass they will never again feel, no trace of the feet
swaddled in sticky-soled socks all hospitals issue except
the rancid scent of fear steeped in breathless acrylic sweat.
The silence is a grey smoke; the camera obscures your face.
In the room with padded, grey walls, any restraint is for your
safety. Still it seems that punishment is devoid of movement,
is, in fact, the lack thereof—the promise of perpetual stillness.
*
Lake Angela creates at the confluence of poetry and the language of dance movement. She holds a PhD in the intersemiotic translation of Austrian Expressionist poetry into dance and has her MFA in poetry. She is a medieval mystic, beguine, and nonhuman creature. Her books include Organblooms and Words for the Dead (FutureCycle Press), and Scivias Choreomaniae is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil. Recent work appears in The Bitter Oleander, Seneca Review, filling Station, Poetry Salzburg Review, Passages North, Lotus-eater Magazine, and others. Lake is poetry editor for Punt Volat and neurodivergence advocacy writer for Brainz Magazine. As director of the poetry-dance group Companyia Lake Angela, she presents the value of schizophrenia spectrum creativity. She welcomes visitors at www.lakeangeladance.com.
I notice you use both spellings of “gray/grey” in the poem. There must be a reason for this. I must ask the Associative Key. I hope this poem will be included in the Scivias Choreomaniae, your forthcoming collection from Spuyten Duyvil.