s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Pretend/Shelter
Maija Elizabeth Ekey & Eliza Catesby Gilmore

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Eliza Catesby Gilmore

pretend if you will

i think they know but admitting is too big a burden to bear so beast of burden is
sung at karaoke throughout the land / he says let’s do it together / or tell me
how / time and time again  

the choices are all there on the lineup of nerve endings / if that wasn’t obvious
already 

i think sometimes of enveloping the whole deal / if i put my mind to it / as they
say / but alas there was another route / the root of the route / asmr videos /
cutting kiwis in half 

i am trying to get to the bottom of the path / or / go back to that trail i hiked that
one time / watched the seasons change in a day and wanted to go more slowly
on the descent 

it’s the slug juice that runs the earth i think i heard someone say once

– Maija Elizabeth Ekey

Maija Elizabeth Ekey

a dream I had of my head

Considering your hands
deep in dough, brings up
a dream I had of my head

in a plastic bag, something you always
told me not to do, but once,
when I was seven, I did.

Maybe. Or at least,
I remember inhaling the fried rice
smell from the Chinese food,

MSG permeating the polyethylene,
and a crackling on the inhale,
like ASMR or the rattle

of something broken, mechanical,
unyielding the diaphanous
membrane around me.

It felt radical then, pinching the handles
below my chin, but not completely
sealing the air in, like I only wanted

to scare myself. Maybe.
Even now, I don’t know
if it happened, nor how something

as wholesome as baking bread
can bring up these synthetic memories
of irreality, impressions

which may be irrelevant.
Am I so insatiable for metaphor?
Say, the bag as mask.

The bag as artifice, or ambush.
The bag as depression,
a house, huffing

into the bag
to define myself.
The bag as a trap.

Maybe it’s just
this discernible sensation
of being back in your kitchen,

every day for a month,
is heavier than curiosity —
is more than three quick breaths.

I’m hungry, and thinking of Kelsey,
last night on the video call,
eating ice cream in her apartment,

explaining how the delivery bag
still smelled like waffle cones,
opening its crumpled,

paper mouth
over the laptop camera,
as if I need only see

– Eliza Catesby Gilmore

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Maija Elizabeth Ekey is many things. Their work has appeared in several publications including Womanzine, Dollfeeder, Girls Get Busy, & Bluestockings Magazine. Maija lives in Kingston, New York.  

Eliza Catesby Gilmore is a person who sometimes writes poems and sometimes does archives. She holds a BA in English from Middlebury College and an MLIS from Simmons University. She still has an embarrassing text/image journal that she kept with Maija Elizabeth Ekey while they were in high school. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.