Dance Arizona Repertory Theatre (DART), October 2004

The dance company of ASU’s Department of Dance provides outreach opportunities for undergraduate and graduate dance students. DART partners with area schools to provide dance programs that foster positive attitudes and interpersonal relationships in children. YWP and DART hosted a week-long interdisciplinary arts residency using an integrated dance/writing curriculum developed by Sean Nevin and Jennifer Tsukayama. Several of the poems produced in this residency were choreographed into DART’s spring dance performance and others were published in 22Across: An Anthology of Young Writers.

Rising and Falling
Collaborative Poem by Herrera Elementary School Students

When my body rises it feels like a jet airplane taking off,
I can hear the engines running. My hands become two diesels
on Highway 101, they are shaking like an earthquake,
like San Francisco in 1981. My body rises
like a spring in action, like a balloon floating up
and my fingers are worms in the mud.
My hands grow heavy as a pick-up filled with wood.
They are sweaty as a bunch of grapes just washed
in the kitchen sink, they are wet as a nose with a cold.

When my body rises it becomes a piece of driftwood
floating on the water and my arms are like magnets
sticking to each other. My legs feel as heavy
as two sumo wrestlers. My head feels like I just got out
of a hot shower. When I fall my body is a bird’s body
gently landing in its nest. When I fall my body changes
into an anchor being lowered into the ocean. My head
is a drum pounding, echoing in a small room. My stomach
is a bowl of pudding being turned with a heavy spoon.
My legs shake like a guy dancing, in a slow kind of way,
for the first time ever, with a girl.

Movement
By Maya Aguille

When I rise
my body becomes
floating water spiders.

My legs are stiff
as a soldier’s back
and my stomach
swarms like maggots
in the trash.

My knees
become spaghetti,
it’s like trying to run
in the deep end
of a swimming pool.

My eyes widen
like a wild cat at night.
When I fall my body feels
Like it is filled
with crawling eyes.

Constellations: My Family of Stars
Collaborative Poem by Herrera Elementary School Students

My family is like ants,
they are always together.
My family is like humans and oxygen,
they can’t live without each other.
My family is awkward
like a pack of crazy psychos
escaped from a crazy home.
At night my family
is like a family of deer
sleeping in the warm night,
the sounds of beautiful clear water
dripping on the leaves of trees.
My family is like a bunch of white doves,
like a rainbow in the sky
We fell like raindrops.
My family is a herd of deer
on a slumped path.
My family is similar to airplanes
coming together at one airport.
My family is like an empty circle,
like four tires and one pops, the flat
tire is empty and the three others are full.
My family is close as a sock and a shoe,
like good friends, a pair, a set.
My family is tight like a knot,
tight as the books on the library shelves.
They are sharks with sharks, fish with fish.
My family is tight as branches on a tree.
The tree has many leaves
because I have a big family.
When birds nest, it’s like a new family
in my family. When it’s fall,
the leaves never fall.
My family is leaves scattered
by the wind. My family
is always in different places
My family is tight like a knot
you can’t untie, like the knot on my shoes.

Comet
By Irma Rodriguez

My hands are dissolving and I feel hot.
Soon I become fire of all kinds of color.
I feel like fire, I feel like I am traveling really
really fast. I soon notice that I can’t smell
and I don’t get hungry. Soon nobody
is looking at me or talking to me. I’m nothing.