Love as Anaconda is a performance featuring poet, Jessy Edwards, and dancer and media artist, Haley Morgan Miller. Jessy’s poem was influenced by her estranged father and their relationship back home in New Zealand. Adapted for performance, Jessy moves about the stage speaking to the performer as if she’s reading a letter to her father. The projection mapped imagery enlivens the metaphor of the anaconda. Haley and Jessy were paired together for Whispers of Rhythm, premiering in January 2024 at 81 Leonard Gallery.

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Love as Anaconda 

 

I am seeking controlled contact with the night. I head underground, 

to ride the mechanical snake. Love is an anaconda slicking 

 

muscular just beneath the waterline. When the lights flicker off, only the moon–

that reflecting rock– leads the way dimly in this strange tunnel. 

 

In the dark, we are more conscious of other bodies, in fear 

and in comfort. In the dark, I reclaim the margins. In one scenario, my father 

 

gets on, sits next to me. He is thirsty. I give him

Gatorade. He is satiated. In another scene, I write to my father 

 

from the bucking train carriage, each letter half-formed or de-

formed. He gets on, takes the letter from my hands. Parses each word,

 

hungrily. Smiles. Gets off. In another, my father enters the car.

He has read my letter. His face is a meteor 

 

shower, aglow with streams of cosmic debris. The anaconda's survival

is based on its ability to constrict. I shouldn’t have been surprised 

 

to hear my dad was sick. Anacondas are stealthy 

and sleek in the water but cumbersome on land. The other 

 

day I was wearing a suit going to an interview (I hate 

wearing suits). Love is an anaconda shedding its skin. 

 

I take out my iPhone, flip the camera and for a split-

second, see my father. 

 

I keep replaying that fantasy 

over & over & over again.