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Ursa Minor

 

I gather up my body

like an armful

 

of water balloons,

give my organelles

 

a talking to.

Went to the woods

 

and became

a slick pouchette

 

for small berries,

saw myself in the belly

 

of a more supreme

being

 

a mother bear.

Matryoshka of bodies

 

nested, small dogs in

leather bags know what

 

I mean, know why

I fizzled, became

 

Rare Earth Metal

once more.

 

It’s true

I had a standard woman

 

body but a lil more

igneous.




Zoë Bodzas

levelheaded: Ursa Minor

 

If you’re interested in astronomy, zoology, or a wide variety of video games containing an Ursa-based character (take World of Warcraft for example), or even if you are interested in none of the above, you probably know what Zoe Bodzas’ poem title refers to. By the time you’ve finished reading the poem, you are positively surprised, and you have a sense of why it was titled the way it was. The title gives the poem an edge; it strengthens its imagery and complements the experience of reading the poem. We pointed out a similarly effective title not so long ago, and how useful a title can be when instead of redundancy it offers an allusive, playful extension to the poem.

 

More than anything else, this is a poem of body. Its first and last sentences speak directly of a body (explicitly, the speaker’s),and there is a “Matryoshka of bodies” right at the center. This body (its “organelles”) is being spoken to. It is being seen (“saw myself in the belly / of a more supreme / being”). It is described by a variety of images simple in meaning but allusive in context: “an armful / of water balloons,” “a slick pouchette / for small berries,” and “Rare Earth Metal.”

 

With all this physicality, one can’t ignore the speaker telling us early on that she “Went to the woods.” It is hard not to read that any other way than a search for essence, in our case the essence of the speaker’s body. This phrase sets up a spiritual search to go along with the physical examination.

 

As for the speaker’s findings, first, she seems to find that essence in the simplicity of the shape and form also alluded to by the title: “a mother bear.” It is a complementary image for the speaker already seeing herself as a little pouch of berries or a handful of water balloons. Whether a creature and its cubs, or as later suggested “leather bags” containing “small dogs” – arriving at the sentence-ending “mother bear” is a decisive moment, echoing the title and ending with a period (one of only four in the poem) that stands out as a dramatic peak in a poem that is otherwise lighthearted, even as it is being profound.

 

With the final sentence though, the poem does not settle on the image of the mother bear, be it maternal yet strong, independent yet reliable. Instead, this body with whom we’ve traveled through the woods ends up between two extremes. The one: a simple, common body of a woman, a “standard woman” as the speaker puts it, familiar, animate, generic. The other: well, the same, but “a lil more / igneous.” Already in the realm of elements with “Rare Earth Metal,” the speaker suggests her body has reached at least a partial state of inanimate matter. And no less a matter than one made of lava, cooled, crystallized, tough. But not entirely, you know, just “a lil.”

 

We’d say using “a lil” here makes the poem. But that would undermine everything else that works so well beforehand. It is nevertheless a nice touch. Through “lil,” the poem keeps its lightheartedness, where other such attempts may go awry trying to break down a body to its chemical essence, philosophically and otherwise. “Lil” also connects us back to the title’s “Minor” and sends us reflecting on the significance of this smallness. How different would the poem be if titled “Ursa Major”? Extremely different and ill-fitted, we think. Thus we are left to reread and see things through their smallness: an organelle, a pouchette, a matryoshka, a fizzled metal.

 

There are more mysteries to this final sentence: “It’s true / I had a standard woman / body but a lil more / igneous.” We’ll leave it at saying it’s a delight to spend time with it. Much more can be said, and you are all welcome to.

 
 

– The Editors

 

P.S. An alternate reality levelheaded for this poem would be solely concerned with the shortness of the lines and with the way the line breaks work. Lil lines, great effect.