1 Poem by Liam Clancy

There is a Quality

There is a quality of care to be taken
When folding your T-shirts
The dark ones, especially
They fall
Like night
Softening your more angular aspects
Deepening, you hope, the mystery of your form
Your mobile and hard ribs
Your swallowing heart and swimming lungs
Your dark strawberry nipples
The curve of your collar bones
The answered question of your love-handles
All of this and more lives within each tender darkening fold
of your T-shirts
The ones you just washed
Just dried
Just rescued from a tumbling, over-warm mouth of a machine
They layer themselves through your hands
A pile of eight or nine days you haven’t yet lived
They slumber in the drawer (top right as I face my dresser)
I wear you over and over, again and again
You teach me every time what it feels like to not just fold but unfold
To absorb my nervous, nervous system
To shield me
To fall all over my torso, my back, my aforementioned dark strawberry nipples
There is a tenderness asked of me when I fold my T-shirts
Especially, the dark ones
Especially, as I slide closed the top draw of my longing


Bionote

Liam Clancy was born in Warwick, RI and grew up in Southern Massachusetts. He has lived on both U.S. coasts in different cities at different times and lives in Germany since July of 2020. He works in the psychosomatic wing of a hospital and practices a kind of movement therapy called the Feldenkrais Method. He has been dancing for 35 years and for 16 of those was a dance professor (UC San Diego). Language and writing have been at the heart of his dancing. His work has included text and speaking while dancing. This is his first foray into sharing the writing that has always accompanied his dance practice.