Fundamentals of Home
Introductory Frame 1
My mother slings her speech bubble
from the front of his Renault Dauphin
to us kids in the back
while we wait in the car at Kaitangata, Riverton,
Balclutha, Oamaru, Milton.
My mother sings her speech bubble;
Meerzeedotes an dozeedotes
an little lamseedivy
a kiddleedivy too wouldn’t youuu?
Her bubble of inheritance passed back
until we grew sick of hearing it.
One day she wound down her window
and out it flew, worn and warbling.
A lost fragment of her childhood.
My Mother, Frame 1a
Meet my mother.
The shrapnel of World War One left my mother running for cover
from my grandfather. The imprint of World War Two
left my mother running for cover from my father.
Introductory Frame 2
Printed in my father’s speech bubble, a 1944 poem called ‘New Earth’.
Bring no flags this time that we return,
Talk no stupid hero stuff, but pray
The simple prayer the Eastern people learn,
Peace upon you—peace upon your way.
Some we left with you no longer wait,
Some who came with us are sleeping near;
Refreshing land—no more inviolate,
A world is yours; for us—another here.
Dreams—no more—the dark unsettled tide
Changing all we knew a year ago.
Would you have our courage—faith—abide?
Leave us then the images we know.
A searing blight—way of pain—
Must we tread it ever day by day?
Pray—to any God—and pray again,
Peace upon us—peace upon our way.
My Father, Frame 2a
Before this or after, there is no trace of a poem.
As far as I can tell, my father, who we never called D A D,
was a pickpocket of ideas.
During his life I believed them all.
My Father, Frame 2b
In the TAB he leans over a man
who is filling in multiple betting slips,
who is holding multiple pound notes of ten and twenty.
My father copies the bets.
Frame 2c
In the TAB my father leans over a different man
who is filling in multiple betting slips,
who is holding multiple dollar notes of twenty and fifty.
Frame 2d
My father leans over the card sharks,
family and friends gambling at night in our lounge.
He takes stock of possible flushes and full houses.
Frame 2e
My mother’s light-as-air cream sponge supper
does little to soothe the drunken flare of ill will.
Frame 2f
In the cellar beneath our family home
he never minded the mud floor, suffocating stink,
labyrinth of darkness ahead.
Frame 3a
I never entered unless invited. My mother’s
childhood toys were stored in a set of mahogany drawers,
colour of drawers merging into the cellar floor.
On a good day my father would take one out and let me look.
Frame 3b
I was always in the way.
Sent from my mother’s hair to my father’s bristle head,
I crouch like a bird on the garden’s edge.
Soil has eaten its winter feed we collected
from horses and compost and the paddle-deep sea.
He buried it all with blood and bones of dead
animals and people delivered in paper bags.
There’s no sign of them now. He digs with the fork,
turns the garden onto its back, crumbles pieces
in his hands, works from one side to the next
like my mother knitting our jerseys in rows.
He wipes his face on the sleeves of an old shirt.
Carries on till the whole garden is sand-smooth.
He gives me a worm to hold. I watch its old body
and make it a dark house in my hands.
My Mother, Frame 1b
She wanted a city centre berth,
dreading the prospect of boredom
following death.
She asked for a front-row site
to keep up with the play of theatre
and concerts, to pray for deep dispersal
of restaurant aromas, to keep her version
of an eye on movies and galleries.
She wanted to eavesdrop on city councillors
following fraught in-house meetings
though gossip was already buried
in decades of regulations,
and to speculate on passers-by and expect us
not to pass her by,
to mostly disapprove of late-night love
in the alcoves,
to heartily approve of protests below her
uniting in group agreement.
She wanted to soak in sporadic dregs of gin
from the odd drunk, as if the tonic
would cause her ashes to shuffle with loose dirt.
She wanted to spy on parishioners leaving the crypt,
to criticize Sunday sermons,
to feel involved with the church when she wasn’t.
She wanted to reside in the perfect garden,
plants fertilised; branches trimmed in autumn,
never a weed to be seen.
She wanted to climb the social ladder and mix
in the holy underground with choristers and bishops,
never anticipating the placement
of my father’s late arrival.
My Mother, Frame 1c
Quietly
Does eat oats and mares eat oats
and little lambs eat ivy.
A kid will eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?
Jenny Powell lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin and is currently studying English at the University of Otago. Her latest collection of poems, Biology Field Trip, was published by Cold Hub Press in June 2026.