Charge
How do we run forward waving flags and singing when our flags are made of breeze and our voices of the future, echoing toward us as we compose them on our tongues? How do we run forward over fields of glass strewn by harrowed wraiths who fear we run at them, when we only want to reach the meadowland? How do we run forward on limbs comprised of ancestors who may recall a different route, a different map, a different land entirely? How do we run forward, folk and family, when the gendarmes jut precipitously with feathers full aflail? How do we run forward in the pitch of moonless night without compass or a torch to guide us safely through the runnels of the march? How do we run forward through the blinding light of media searing nerves and hemispheres with images designed to burn their way into our homes? How do we run forward in the breach? How do we run forward falling? How do we run forward in our last remaining shoes? How do we run forward in our flesh?
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RECENT PUBLICATIONS ::
I have a somber and unusually pretty poem in the latest issue of The Marsh Hawk Review, one that harkens to an older age of poetry. It’s titled “Requiem”, and dwells on the fragility of life and the seasons. Wordsworth is loving the hell out of me for this one. It’s even got form (but no rhyme, soooooorry!) — four octets consisting of melodic tetrameter except for the fourth and eight lines, which are trimeter. (Looking at it now, it feels like a formal foreshadowing of the crown of sonnets I wrote this past summer, now a chapbook titled Breaking Crown.) Please do give “Requiem” a read, especially if you could use a calm moment.
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Speaking thereof, my new chapbook Breaking Crown is doing well and inspiring a lot of people to break things. Yay! It’s even got a formal review in the works, and Scot Young of Rusty Truck Press recently posted of it, “Something different, something refreshing and something noteworthy. I read it twice and will again before the day is over.” Thank you, Scot! It’s an interlinked series of fifteen resistance sonnets that don’t tell you how to resist (though it may suggest what), but do give you a license and some fuel. Want to know more (including how to grab one for your collection)? Go to the Books & Chapbooks page of this website for lots of fun facts and ordering info. You can also, as of this post, read four of them as a teaser on the Fresh Words page.
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The history of credit banking is the history of murder, insofar as murder is coaxing rabbits to a cliff and dangling the mythic carrot o’er the edge. What a precipice we are, bound here in the human mind! It may, however, be questionably human to create want then exploit it without regard for others. It may in fact be questionably human to be without regard for others. Credit banking is the hefty gem glued to the thorn lodged in the ribs of the mother cat, pendulous and twisting, scraping a spiral through the thoracic wrap. Yet we see it as the tweezers that will ease our every need. The history of need is the history of living, but the history of invented need is the dialog of the sociopathic child with the tortured frog. And why do we listen to the siren’s drone? Because our ears have been stitched to the wall by doppelgangers who chew upon our pharynx as they sing. Let’s rip our ears from our heads! We don’t need that ounce of flesh to hear clearly.
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REVIEW :: Two Dance Performances
I’m not a dance critic but I’ve seen a bunch and attempt to do it a little and if nothing else I know how something affects me when I see it. So here are some words about two times this past month that I witnessed people moving around and stuff.
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Rogelio López & Dancers — Entre Mucho Machismo Hay Pocos Machos, September 17, 2026 (in preview)
I saw this stunning piece of dance performance at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco. Entre Mucho Machismo Hay Pocos Machos by Rogelio López & Dancers is a narrative blend of queer folklórico and modern dance that takes you through a transformation of the central character, played by López, from feigned machismo to a proud and fluid gay masculinity in a culture not ready to accept that level of realness. But that description doesn’t convey the incendiary passion and incisive precision that charged the piece with nonstop momentum and energy that brought everyone in the room to an elevated state. In fact I was floating on it for hours afterward.
Entre Mucho Machismo Hay Pocos Machos comes partly (or greatly?) from Rogelio López’s love for the Folklórico tradition, which he learned early and painfully does not have room for open queerness. Indeed referring to the piece as “queer folklórico” is itself an act of dissent and challenge to those ingrained cultural restrictions. In a brief Q&A after the show, López related that he received death threats just for advertising another version of this piece a year or two ago – and it’s that level of queerphobia in this century and decade that I think imbues the passion in this dance with an almost existential necessity — you can feel the power of not just the characters but the dancers themselves being exactly who they need to be. Ultimately this isn’t just a piece about breaking through dance or cultural traditions or surviving oppression; it’s about striving and becoming and thriving right here, right now, right in front of you. And in the course of that, the many varied and evolving dance and movement styles — that convey these truths and a central love story so well — are thrilling.
If this intrigues you, I urge you to check out their website (linked above) to learn more and find out about future performances. And because I found them interesting, here’s a page of reviews of an earlier version of the piece, which I believe was the one Rogelio mentioned in his discussion.
Photo below from Mucho Machismo y Pocos Machos. From the left – Matt Han and Rogelio Lopez. Photo by Yvonne Portra.
SAFEhouse Arts — Return of the RAW Showcase, September 26, 2026
Had really quite a giddy evening witnessing four performing groups via SAFEhouse Arts, a cooperative community arts org based in the Tenderloin in San Francisco. The RAW (Resident Artist Workshop) program has been on hold for a number of months while the organization shifted spaces (i.e. got capitalismed out of a workspace), thus this excellent and feisty return.
This show at Theater 33 on Sutter Street offered new work by the performers for our enjoyment and contemplation (and occasionally giddiness). First up was Risa Padilla, a member of the 2026 LatinXtensions program of the David Herrera Performance Company, who did a couple of movement pieces that were not only about empowerment but viscerally empowering in the moment. Go Risa! Split into two sections were riveting performances by six women of traditional Indian Kuchipudi dance choreographed by Bobby Chavali of NatyaTarang Kuchipudi Kalakshetram dance studio. I know I said above that I’ve seen a bit of dance, but I’d never realized how intregal eye movement can be in a tradition, so maybe I haven’t seen much. But I’m working on it. Up next and I mean UP was Steamroller Dance Company, helmed by Jesse Bie, who is currently the Executive Director of SAFEhouse Arts. These guys are one of my favorite queer dance companies — hell, one of my fave dance companies of any kind — who managed this evening to charge up the theater and get us all laughing — yes, dance can be funny — crawling over the audience while belting out the theme song from Chariot of Fire (wth!), then crawling all over each other, pushing, falling, saving, and generally showing great love and friendship. Thanks, fellas! The evening ended with a piece by Darcie Luce/The Performance Lab in which five women attempted to collaboratively build a structure on stage out of all kinds of cardboard boxes while a dickhead male would occasionally strut across and knock their work unapologetically the hell over. No spoilers but the piece went on a while with the women increasingly trying to defend their work, and slowly devolved from humorous to more and more tense until the discomfort was thick in the room, was actually scary. With cardboard boxes! And so very real.
We left feeling very energized and more ready for the world than when we walked in. If you’re in the Bay Area, keep your eye on the SAFEhouse and Steamroller sites for future shows and make a point of checking them O-U-T.
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Let it coil inside you like a spring, like an electromagnetic helix waiting to spit a flash of lightning at the world. Let it seethe, ferment, roil into possibility. Let it sail, sift, vision a dance reeling into the next century. You’re a lance, you see, a triple-pronged, ocean-heated masamune, your steel layered in infinitesimal steps to slice mesas and steppes into stoops. Kneel and pray, they say, lest the lone warrior take you to heart; but if you start a fecund sprout with extra care, you may find no need for the soldier’s stare. Feel free to feel free, which means that should your coil charge, you’re in your rights and nature to allow it fray and give it leave to splay a blazing show across the new-decaying stage. Let us rage, my spleen. Let us stay.
Sincerely,
Richard
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