Boxes into Circles
By Niku Sharei
Boxes are for assorted chocolates and unassembled IKEA pieces
Boxes are not the resting place for young mothers
Boxes are for shoes and for vote collections
Boxes are not a place for teachers to teach addition and subtraction
Boxes are for colored pencils and for cigarettes to lie in
Boxes are not for 4-year-old boys to play ball at the beach
Boxes are for black and white photos and new computers
Boxes are not for clarifying and categorizing identity
Boxes are for keeping things clean and in order
People are not things to be cleaned or put in order
People make circles
Young mothers make circles as they dance around their children
Teachers make circles to show that we each get a piece when we take from pi, it’s small, it counts and it’s endless
4-year-old boys make circles so they grow into team players
People make circles around dishes to fill up with a world of taste beyond Big Mac
People are lost without circles
They lose their grip on their wheel
And start drowning in a pool of what they think and how they feel
Caught in their own whirlwind
People make circles, tiny and out of steel
Without aim but on target ready to ‘win’
And
Bang
People
Are put
Into
Boxes
Where they don’t belong
Boxes are made of lines
People are made of circles
People don’t get out of line
People fall out of circles
(Click here to listen to an audio reading of this poem by Niku Sharei)