Category: 2013

Wet & Forget   I’m hosing out my head waterblasting regrets, unpeeling lichen stickers here’s one stuck nugget: slithering belts unbuckled methane-breath inside the cold damp duvet we scuttled under timid nibbles, your moth lips a cavern of nitrogen your mildewed clothes beside a dribblin’ Wellington window your theories on…

1 | 2   Far North in memory of FSK   The Hokianga was the furthest north we went together. We never reached Cape Reinga, Te Rerenga Wairua a journey that you wondered if you’d make in spirit form – take the local flight path, then bank left head west for…

1 | 2   To seat 23E   At the outset nothing is between the woman in the aisle seat and me in the window seat   except you, 23E, and your emptiness across which eyes meet and pleasantries exchange;   but then your sly transformation into a pool of first…

The Things We Carried   My body is not a clock it has driftwood in it four stone adzes a beech tree, kauri a stand of kahikatea in the swamp six pieces of broken glass on the tide line five of them polished smooth.   My body is not a…

Real Estate   When the house sold we opened a bottle and drank to our success, already planning how to spend our share.   We didn’t discuss the fruit trees Dad tended or the roses Mum sprinkled throughout the beds, for those of us left to weed around at our…

1 | 2   Lost Nephew   Trucks rumble past my sister’s house it is early the sea has thrown us back your body I sleep in your old room   It is early what woke me? I sleep in your old room moths whirl dying   What woke me? you…

1 | 2   The Angel   In the ensuing turmoil an angel glides out as dowdy as a sparrow undeterred on a surfboard he paddles his way toward you and you are lifted your head cradled in his arms and for a moment the sun gilds his magnificent wings the…

1 | 2 | 3 | 4   Need   Under the mat of torn-off bracken, we foraged like a lover for a hot wet hole of a heart to put our fingers in. I was on the lower flank, you were on the rise. You said, make your fingers…

1 | 2 | 3 |4   Is it dark already?   By then, boys were afraid of horses and the empty skins slung on branches, their unsaddled backs broad as spindly mountain ranges. Surely you’d just slide down both sides at once until your brain, even your last central…

1 | 2 | 3 | 4   Return   when we were old for hours each day you would look out of the window as if I were coming towards you   from the other side of the sea     piercingly slow   like a knifing light lifting the lip of haze …