Category: 2013

1.   A man   wanders.   He is confused.   He is found as far away   as New Brighton.   His sons are veterans. His sons are boys. His son is dead.   His wives are dead. His wife   will be in contact with the hospital.   His son, later, will never …

Continue reading

1 | 2   red carded                                       (for a not-to-be-named Māori conference)   your nametag is red because you don’t speak your own language it is not enough for you to hold this secret tightly: everyone must know   red like the adulterer’s A marked, branded, tagged for identification upon recapture   hangs around your neck like …

Continue reading

1 | 2   Layers                                                  Our language is in triplicate: Like those old accounting notebooks With different coloured pages Nestled one on top of the other Over and over again; A …

Continue reading

A small boy and a woman   She stood on the platform of the Ohakune railway station with her grandson Chaz, aged nine, waiting for the eleven p.m. train that would take them to Ngaruawahia, a small town on the Main Trunk Line. The train had begun its journey six hours ago in Wellington. It …

Continue reading

1 | 2 | 3   I thought it was a castle   My once-favourite mountain has come inside The city limits—with its round water reservoir on top. In my kid outings I thought it was a castle, perched Above this suburb. Woods and vaulted hallways, without a trace of mist except Against my eyes …

Continue reading

1 | 2 | 3   Ode to Shelly Beach—, excerpt   Down hill—crane lift—to girders and casement widening . . . Day came and for a while beads still Fall over the bridge, as it runs out on trestle tables.     Soon, A normal day, with the light I don’t think would be believed By …

Continue reading

1 | 2 | 3   The Telegram   The moon sends me Further down the fairway between pine steeples and birches, So the night feels what I pedestrianly understand as ‘soviet’— Drearily stalking leaves. Through phases of the grass : Enclosed in shoelaces; cradled by a sandal until Carpet that hasn’t had the edge …

Continue reading

1 | 2 | 3   The photographer in the library   The photographer doesn’t look at the librarian behind the desk silent and tethered until she gathers up her issued books and turning glances and catches a look of such lovely lamentation lifting and opening she gasps, stops and drops her keys, and for …

Continue reading

1 | 2 | 3   Saoirse at the fridge   Saoirse weeps at the fridge door removing nothing, the cold air on her tears, her feet in socks from Singapore Air. There’s a pink stain on the shelf where the milk sits seeping and outside the window someone is sky-writing something in the sky …

Continue reading

1 | 2 | 3   Emily, too early   Dreams rush through me like trains in the night, the tracks pulling slowly apart. It is different for Emily who says it is more like sewing a seam between two pieces of cloth. It is dreaming, after all, which holds the night together for so …

Continue reading