DIANE MEHTA

Walking while Dancing

Scatting nonsense
phonemes to myself,
off-beat clucks, chimes;
annunciating hesitations
to get my mind arranging
hesitations of the breath.

Squaring my see-saw
shoulders, chest up,
I feel the motion of her toes
in mine, tracing backwards
the widest half-circles
of my half-past life.

I pause on the street,
released from sidewalks,
waltzing the local jig
to the frenzy of the boombox
& the talkers who swank
their parts of speech so well.

Reversing on unsteady feet,
I repeat the way she swept
her arms out, advancing
in opposition to her legs
as if collecting ground
while losing it.

Minutes from now
she’ll lever up her toes,
finesse a shape, experiment
a lift without suspecting how
the memory of her gestures
choreographed my steps.

Diane Mehta was born in Frankfurt and grew up in Bombay and New Jersey. She is the author of Happier Far: Essays and two poetry books: Tiny Extravaganzas (2023) and Forest with Castanets (2019). She writes for The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, VQR, and Southern Review. Her work has been recognized by the Café Royal Cultural Foundation and fellowships at Civitella Ranieri, Bogliasco, and Yaddo. She is a judge for the 2025-27 Robert B. Silvers Foundation awards in arts and literary criticism and journalism. She is poet in residence at the New Chamber Ballet in New York City.