Poems
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Re-assembly Required
By Felicity Plunkett(after Nathan Baker)
Wooden anomalies
inhabit -
Every Day
By MTC CroninYou are the best material.
You are the invitation.
Everyone accepts.
If you want hospitals, mad-houses & war -
Swan Lake
By Judith BishopAs music curves through the body, the swing of it
lifting mind's invisible feet, so it happened
a ballet I'd gone to in the days after breaking up -
Cold Was the Ground
By Alicia Sometimesdark was the night
Blind Willie Johnson huffs in my ears
weeping into God. How easy to loop
the past into a soundtrack, light digestion -
Mona St
By Fiona Wrightfor Sarah
You forget about it, sometimes.
The open-cut of this place, how each day -
The Fridge of Lost and Found
By Bravo ChildFridges offering fragments of forgiveness.
A cabinet holding packets of livingness lavished with emotions and sauces,
adorned with magnets and corporate endorsements.
Bottles of gorgeous importance coat our throats, as our voices sing jingles, -
The Kite
By Emily BallouThe back a separate body
unfamiliar to the face
ceremony of mirrors
to find its graceful lace. -
It's not about display
By Gareth JenkinsI have this special spot: It's a secret.
I will tell you though, now we know each other, a little.
There's this space
at the back of my kitchen cupboard -
-
Cut - outs
By Felicity PlunkettNo words
but the blazing
as when oblique sun
grazes the page. -
Wherever you are, there is always a giraffe
By Esther OttawayWherever you are, there is always a giraffe
after Judy Johnson
Cool as a whale -
Waiheke
By Ella Holcombefor days
we walk the island
broken tennis rackets, tent poles -
Disappearing Act
By Felicity Plunkettfor Bas Jan Ader
(1942-1975)
‘because gravity overpowers me’ -
sand
By joanne burnsdid i leave them or did they
leave me; i don’t remember
any farewells, i didn’t ask about
their futures or dream we were -
Non-standard Anthem
By Lachlan Brownsnapped in traffic static
the panicked lateness of
cars as though this were
an echo of shanghai or -
Blazer
By Esther OttawayAt all times, you will have on your hat, your gloves, your blazer.
- Mrs Burke, Deputy Head, Ogilvie High School, on the morning of Black Tuesday,
7 February 1967
-
Confetti by Dada
By Felicity Plunkett'a lie that I have FIXED like a butterfly on a hat’
(Tristan Tsara)
-
TALISMAN
By Anna Kerdijk NicholsonOften, I’m not quite in
the school rules. I slip in
under the radar. I don’t
comply, but perhaps -
Mounted Moose Head
By Ivy IrelandIt was possibly a stag, or was it moose meat?
Certainly accusatory, those marbles-over-concrete eyes.
They see beyond now, what they notice most is the lack of it.
-
THE WORD: MELANCHOLY
By Luke BeesleyI went to the races but the races were slow
I forgot to eat
I was thin and near a lake
I had to look for a phrase on the tree
