Emily Toder
Movement Study
One moves from a sense of confidence
One’s footing is learned from a doing
Footing is a phrase denoting confidence
Descending stairs takes such belief
Ascent is blind and normal
Flatlands are unsafe due to the flatness of waters
Moving on earth is difficult and hazardous
Historically it is the number one cause of death
I am making a study of vehicles
and its object is to codify the distrust of the limb
and of the earth
Or of the limb alone upon the earth
One of its aims is to explore the limp exhaustion
of the limb and the dressing of its lameness in impressive,
showy spectacles, like steam
I have an agenda and it’s to show that movement
is the true and only feat of the human body
and the basis of its agency’s serious limits
which wrongly feel boundless to the elated
The elated have a ridiculous will to direct it
Agency, that is
The souls of the elated are sprightly from an inner knowing
or it could be a false peace
I have a goal to my research and it is to prove the distance
between individuals is historically bridged by the peverse
confidence of rich men
Large and fat men or pale tubular men
Often times you do not have a good mental image of the man
A man who can’t see limits to agency dishonors curiosity
I have not shown my work to my boss yet
I have an agenda and it’s to show the philanthropists
who loved people so much
paved the ways to carry them out of the virtual uselessness
of their own bodies
One’s own body is useless and fixed, even in moments of confidence
One moves from a momentary lapse in the admission
of one’s unhurried pull to the floor and one’s own muscles’
inscrutible chemical metamorphoses
One’s momentum is fed by the illusion of a live and willed mobility
One building a loft feels so great
I cannot come down from a loft ever since the wedding
My friend talked me down from it
and I came to the floor
I go to work each day conducting my study
I study how the A train’s sloth
is offensive to the lame and sore-footed
To the injured and ankle-beat laborers
And to athletes
It is a disservice to the clumsy toiling plumber
an overt affront to dancers
It’s a punch in the face to all the heartworn caretakers
And still the only way for them to get to the cared
The sloth is a large classist kick in the face
which is patently socioeconomic and not just biochemical
even though the inertia is physically unsettling in a scientific way
Socioeconomic aspects are key in this realm but it takes us
out of the essence of my study which is less social
My study tries to steer clear of the administrative and political
nuances of civil engineering within organized societies
because that’s too emotional
My study’s more into the ability of man to perceive his
innate dissatisfaction in stasis
I also plan to study the willingness of man
to attribute life and life-like properties to static beasts like coral
but also, vines
I hope one day to make this study great
If it really takes off, it could go off, into space
the main points of which fall outside
of the scope of this poem
My study begins on earth, in the hammered eyes of strangers
who move in a mysterious, momentous confidence
I can’t wrap my head around
My thesis is that momentum derives from a confidence to move
It’s hard to be animate and it takes confidence
It’s interesting to me because I’ve always moved completely without it
So at the end of the study the thesis is disproven
and the opposite thesis is put forth: movement takes nothing, actually
The reader’s confidence engorges
from the failure of the thesis to deliver
The reader takes the poet’s arm and their elbows lock
in a rich and boring triangle