‘Sarabande’

Dominique Carrillo-Pierce is a German-American writer, designer, and filmmaker. Her work has been featured in The Malahat Review, Panorama, Bombay Gin, Stone Canoe, WHLR, Bricolage, Miracle Monocle, and more.

Sarabande 

after Handel’s Keyboard Suite in D Minor, HWV437:III

you want 

to dance

with another

i want 

to witness desire 

i have no right to

then night 

disappears 

into day 

dancing you say

i say 

i do not mind

ask you to spin 

toward me

to let me glimpse

you

one hip higher 

lifted in the

weightlessness 

which preludes 

a fall

you protest

i have no right

i spin

try to land 

my eyes 

on your horizon  

to be that mark 

you would have 

to stop 

James Ducat’s poetry has appeared in Penn Review, Carve, Bellingham Review, CutBank, Apogee, and elsewhere, has been featured on Verse Daily, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His chapbook A Field of Nopes is from Bamboo Dart Press. His full-length collection Debris Orbits was a 2025 semi-finalist for both the Ashland Poetry Press Richard Snyder Memorial Prize and the 2025 Word Works Washington Prize. James holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is professor of English and creative writing at Riverside City College, where he advises the literary journal MUSE. Find him at jamesducat.com.