Photo credit: Aishvarya Arora
Esther Kondo Heller is a poet, literary critic, and experimental sound and filmmaker. They are a Barbican Young Poet, an Obsidian Foundation Fellow, a Ledbury Critic, and an Image Text Ithaca Junior Fellow. They have an MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. They are currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where they are working on transnational Black poetics. Heller's writing has appeared in the Georgia Review, BOMB , Modern Poetry in Translation, the Guardian amongst other places, their debut poetry collection, Ar:range:ments is forthcoming with Fonograf Editions in March 2025.
DANCING
Tonight I want to go dancing in the streets.
The votes are in and dancing is all that’s left.
I want to shake ass. Titties free in a sheer blue
dress like Chloe in 1974. Ecstatic, fist pounding
the air full of beat. I will be dancing for no one,
for no party, apart for movement. I will be twirling
revolutions. Tonight, I am gasping in my bed my
beating heart sweats my bones out. I dreamt
myself dancing in silence, I dreamt my body
shaking at the top of my lungs. My sound cast
in the street. Cast in a casket. Cast in a class
room. Electric slide with all present and past
I wake up, my mouth knows the steps, tells me
we will dance tonight. We will. We will. We must.
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Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.