big mac trees

in poor childhoods big macs grow on trees as high as heaven to humans who sin. whole
neighbourhoods are full of fatness, not heart disease fatness but brand new baby fatness. it’s
because we asked grandad what heaven was like and he said it was different for every human.
that very afternoon the age of hash browns was born and bottomless pit bellies that felt full
but never filled. our dead sister’s tree to her delight grew big macs without pickles. ours held
optimum heat and appeared picture-perfect like on billboards on the other side of a dirty bus
window on the other side of town.

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Lisa Stanley is an emerging poet from Tāmaki Makaurau. Her poems appear in Aotearoa in Landfall and a fine line, and internationally in Moonflake Press. Her poem ‘afakasi māmā’ was selected for Poem of the Month in October 2024 by the New Zealand Poetry Society Te Rōpū Toikupu o Aotearoa.