I thought I stood among giantsBut some of them were snakesCold to my vulnerabilityI’m more potoroo than python I do not hiss, I scurryI do not fight, I run I thought I was not worthyAs I am no giantIn their presence I felt meekI’m more a pleaser than a wheeler-dealer I do not shout, I…
I found one of your letters, the guidelines on the airmail-ruled Croxley pad ignored. ‘I am woman hear me ROAR’defied the narrow, pale blue corridors. Words I wanted my mother to say, but she couldn’t. You could. Thank God you could. My mother only yelled at me from my lounge,‘Remember Lorraine? She’s dead.’ What she really meant…
Today I didn’t goto any of the funky cafes—organic, vegan, artisan,bike shop, plants— Craving impersonal service,urban anonymity, I cameto the chain cafe in the little mall.Sticky tables, eggy smell, and looksfrom local matrons. My mother’s remembered voicesays Well, you willgo around lookinglike that— But it’s this skin I feel happy in.Yesterday on the swim-with-dolphins boata…
We head north in a great March,Travellers in a Coke can,Leaning forward on the Kilmog,Reclining on the plain,Gauging how far?How far now?How far again. I tell of yesteryear’s cars:The Mirage and the Gemini,The Starlet with sheep damage.Heavy, bronze and frosted,Ancestral vehicles:Our lineageIn the garage. Why are cars stellar, cosmic,But shuttles named for the gods?Launched into…
Now is the time after living so longto think of those who’ve done me wrong. They say revenge is a dish best served coldwell my freezer is full and I’m getting old. Michael Gould’s poetry has appeared in publications both academic and popular in Aotearoa New Zealand (e.g., Landfall, The Spinoff), Australia (e.g., Meniscus, Otoliths),…
you can see your words in my wordsyou see i chose to eat your words and down they went into my bellythere they swirl become my own when i speakfrom my belly Dr Rachel Faleatua has published on authenticity labour in the Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies and has a book chapter on…
They love lie detection tests and detention bracelets.They inflate a soft toy globe, they puff with notable lips.They discuss persecution complexes.They have devastation visited upon them.They always hark back to analogue times.They anguish about the good, the bad, the God-bothered.They make a welter of air kisses.They demand a simultaneous translation.They are drifting along a flight…
By the Sheep Gate Are these the lame, blind, infirm and withered who’ve flung off motel towelling robes, slid their complimentary slippers under the loungers? (Holy ground—they know it.) Does an angel stir the waters? And creation’s primal call: is that deep’s talk to deep I catch in every drop of utter blue babbling through the pool? Each molecule…
If my heart were lassoed by some beautiful woman whose pockets were lined with immense wealth, and she tried to drag it back to the wealthy suburb of Illinois where she was born and raised, I would grimace, resist, plead that my heart only beats in the city, defibrillated each morning in the vibrations of…
There in your kitchen, we crack brown eggs over your sink.Hushed, we redefine our childhood legends. Yoruba tales whisper about the cunning tortoise who would listen to the meeting of the birds and make a feathered shell with his own two hands. Rubbed raw and pink in Jerusalem bathwater.Or—no. Maybe not Jerusalem. Maybe Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Maybe it’s…