Maya Schwartz: Two Poems
the ball, or on dancing again
we are doing spirals
which means twisting your body
around itself, not your whole body
but just one part of it or two or three parts
at the same time
at the same time we are also
sliding and pushing and rocking also
jostling always all of us and all of this
at the same time
we are assembling
which means pushing and sliding and rocking and
jostling and spiralling into one identifiable
shape that we make with our
whole body all of it
every piece of it
I always think of an assembly line
all parts of my body being
put together on the
factory floor
made into a commodity
which most often looks like
a ball
with all parts of my body
(all arms and feet and legs and hands and head and shins and forearms pelvis and chest)
folded under me
allfoldedintome
ants of unmemory
we cook whiskey dinner
with a sasamat slinger
stuffed for nothing under artichoke moon
you breathe me better and i swoon
tiny spoons with handles mismatched
break open the blunder and relax
squeezing pity by the penny for goodness
sakes i confess to a life
of begging morality and morseley
filigree pretending, repenting, unletting
one last chance at admitting
it takes time, time and quite a lot of swimming
stroking keys like gun smoke jolting us
into absurdity i eschew
the meaning of certainty
and veer away from anonymity
i cry and circle back to a time
when along my blue desk crawled
ants of unmemory
Maya Schwartz is a graduate student at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. Her research is in contemporary Canadian poetry and literature.