" A brilliant poetic debut about gender-based violence that dismantles received definitions of both gender and violence, Horrible Dance is an accomplished addition to transfeminist thought and theory.

By turns darkly comic, emotionally connected, playful, incisive, lyrical and irreverent, Lake's poems navigate a harrowing personal and political terrain with understated, expansive wisdom. Lake persistently returns us to the search for love that lies at the core of relational trauma, even as she shows us how catastrophically such a search can be derailed.

This is a rare text able to hold the full velocity of a survivor's hurt and rage alongside a clear-eyed understanding of the extent and complexity of harm. In their honest accounting of a wide array of bad encounters, these poems point us, again, toward compassion, tenderness, and solidarity.

can you forgive me< /br>for how you hurt me so bad
--"On Shame" " Libraire Clio

Contents
Act I : The Home
- Outdoor Cat
- Pre-Transition House Party Disaster
- Part of Men's Bodies That Tell Their Confessions
- On Womanhood
- Disposability Blues
- Bruise (v.): to continue through the river, even as He grows heavier
- Family / History

Act II : The Orther
- On Shame
- Night Not to Get Married
- A Pearl
- Reposition I : Burn Sometihng
- Reposition II : WHAT MASK
- the purest breakup poem is the bit in the "lighthouse" when robert pattinson makes willem dafoe his pup & then immediately kills him & then Dies
- Greenhouse
- Sonnet Under Ice

Act III : The Relations of Production
- Pop Quiz
- Color Study : Unemployed
- Color Study : Desk v. Window
- Sonnet for the Boss's Son
- Color Study : Full Time
- Color Study : Crying@Work
- Suicide in Translation
- How to Live Alone
- Houses and people
- Grief Sestina
- Bruise (n.) : an inabilité to sleep
- Color Study : Horrible Dance
- Good Advice from an Undiscovered Atom

Notes and Acknowledgments[-]