Lime Cordial - takahē

It came to me young, that lime-cordial sweetness with its surge then turning in on itself. // And I saw it in the iris of a boy I kissed; a boy who didn’t make it past the rope. Remember flecks of citrine, perhaps just mnestic afterglow. // Later, double-stacked green hearts would get us wide-eyed under light-lines, hedonic sermons. // Soft to the touch, I imagine, among the foliage of a kākāriki as it kek-kek-kek’ed from a tawhairauriki tree; // and hard—I know because I’ve held it—in the pounamu, koru-shaped and passed down from the faultline of my father’s early fracturing. // Peek at me, sleeping beneath the threads of a deep-forest bamboo, soothing me still in twilight. // The grapes come autumn, bursting bright on my tongue; the salty brine of an olive, then gustatory wince. // And that trance-like, ticking chitter that soundtracks the walk sign. // Oh, my poor monstera, unrelenting in its thriving despite me, despite the cat piss and summer drought. //

Kacey Martin is a Māori (Te Arawa) emerging poet and academic, born and based in Eora / Sydney, Australia. Their work has been published in Cordite Poetry Review, PRISM international, Rust & Moth, Tell Me Like You Mean It 8, and more.