The Studio

By Erin Conway-Smith

​I began the monumental task of coiling
 
minutes to the hour. Shaped a base, slopped slurry
 
into a functional form or so I’d like to think. A little too weighty,
 
maybe, and measurably sloped. You wouldn’t set your watch by it
 
any sooner than the Dufferin bus. Well, it’s built now.
 
Brief triumph. Wonky in reflection.
 
Would I tear it all down? Some days, sister.
 
I carried it far, further than I should’ve done — 
 
duct tape, good fortune. That New Year’s in Xi’an
 
with dripping Tang horses, a leaning pagoda,
 
keen but uneven — there was still a way back, back then.
 
I could have wandered in, said hi, spinned the wheel again.
 
But hours became years, countries. And when I finally did return,
 
looking up I could only see condos.

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Tread

By Erin Conway-Smith

​Russell would extol the virtues of swimming 
in pools in Cape Town and Lisbon,
off coasts near Sea Ranch, near Sydney,
wetsuit, no wetsuit
 
I couldn’t much agree. 
The discomfort of cold water on skin. 
The crawling. 
 
It’s too much, some days. 
A ringing phone,
locusts on a tin roof.
The pressure of air, even — 
 
too thin, too dense
now whirling — 
 
it’s still possible to ascend 
but, like a sooty tern
you might get blown off course
 
and wind up circling over mealie fields
exhausted, with no hope 
 
but to be rescued by the well-intentioned,
trucked to Durban
and pointed in the direction of the sea. 

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​Erin Conway-Smith lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Her poems have been published in The Malahat Review, Grain, Tupelo Quarterly, New Contrast, Best Canadian Poetry 2024 and other places. Her debut chapbook is forthcoming from Anstruther Press in 2026.