Poems and Texts

“A Dance for First People” by Vincent Katz

A Dance for First People

a sagging weight
resigned strength
forfends

hodgepodge elegance
mired sanity
rust

instinctive grace
a needless rush
flustered

off the mark
sitting punching
a cold lying down

in death
in flag of country’s
death

black not black
back of space
regret

yellow green
purple red
wait

hungry entity
priest vision
wrist

Vincent Katz

Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, and critic. He is the author of Southness (Lunar Chandelier Press, 2016) and Swimming Home (Nightboat Books, 2015), as well as The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (Princeton University Press, 2004). He is the editor of Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art (MIT Press, 2002; reprinted 2013). He lives in New York City, where he curates “Readings in Contemporary Poetry” at Dia:Chelsea. Raphael Rubinstein has characterized Katz as “A 21st-century flâneur whose wanderings range from the sidewalks and subways of New York City to the crowded beaches of Rio de Janeiro.”

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