DIS B O U N C E; Breaks Undo Us Whole

by Sandra Ruiz

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DIS
B
O
U
N
C
E

we will fly like double-
dutch rhythms, tiny upswing 
leaps in freestyle’s freelance,
unbothered upbeats to salt 
rings encircling crips,
feeling-bound, rebound, flip, replay.

sun ripples
to moon’s craze,
water clefts to earth’s
forced fade,

we will bend sky
until she touches
the ground; honoring
in tender duress,
our tingling toes
against the echoes’ concrete.

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Breaks
             Undo
  Us
            Whole

we’ve been waiting 
for our reflection
to crack

an image,
silently trodden
stops across

the mirror’s
brigade, we
champion on

like chameleons,
a copy for
a poly fade. 

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Sandra Ruiz is the Sue Divan Associate Professor of Performance Studies in Theatre and a Conrad Humanities Scholar in English at UIUC. Ruiz is the author of Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance, co-author with Hypatia Vourloumis of Formless Formation: Vignettes for the End of the World, and a co-series book editor with Shane Vogel & Uri McMillan of Minoritarian Aesthetics (NYU Press). Ruiz is also the producer of La Estación Gallery (held together by a community of fierce minoritarian folk) and Minor Aesthetics Lab.