Keith Nunes

Keith Nunes (Lake Rotoma) has had works published around the globe, has placed in competitions, been anthologised and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His book of poetry/short fiction, “catching a ride on a paradox”, is sold by McLeods Booksellers, Rotorua.

My passion for writing poetry and short fiction is intensifying as I’m ageing. If this continues I might just explode.

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Keith Nunes

 

 

On the border line

 

we edge around the smudged borders of her personality,

dare not be the ‘immigrant’ who mistimes an entry

 

we step unarmoured around deftly buried land mines

avoiding the inhuman glare that

turns children into pillars of salted peanuts

 

in the rooms of avoidance

plans for escape are whispered

and patiently, silently

enacted

until the inflamed has only furniture to burn

 

Shaky

 

her amethyst eyes

are decided

 

her right foot

draped in Italian leather

imperceptibly

reveals

the direction

 

will she leave the hat?

please leave the hat

 

the ‘welcome mat’ between us

 

“thanks?” she says

 

“for leaving the hat”

 

her shaking head

always the shaking head

 

How stripped is my valley

 

laden cows in the middle distance

boom and echo during a stealth bombing run of a hawk

chasing the last of anything edible

 

the Book of Genesis-sun beams streams of illustrations of

begetting and bemoaning onto the barren far off mountains

 

sedimentary rock

penetrates

the crumbling-bone hillsides as though fighting for a view

of their ancestors

used to construct houses

for the scorched-earth herders

 

the feathered

fly the flag of the fucked-off,

beating against the blanched winds

and milk-fat tide

unable to find the lone tree

that resembles home