Spidery crawl of deep scratchesStitching the landscape of fleshMend the planes together, smoothMoulded playdoughPrepubescent enamelRubbery skinInside peeled off fish batterWhite and swollen Raw and rubbingTight peach coloured microporeWrinkled chafing skinThe puckered red crayon scribble across your heartStings like sand sliding against sunburnDanger wobble like aJelly Tip at the beach Colourless linesWaiting for the felt tip…
So you go into a shop.I don’t know what the façade looks like and it doesn’t make a difference.You would go in even if it was dilapidated,maybe it is,most days it is. So you go into the shop,and the shelves are lined with everything,all carefully catalogued,prices clearly visible.You are the only customer. So you are…
1. sometimes i think my name was given to me, in open upturned palms, as a blank slate.who is tremendous. a beautiful and fleeting glimpse of a world so slight before it is already taken away from you.beautiful girls in muslin dresses I can’t believe I have to keep feeding this body til I die…
This corner, a cliff’sfogged cellar forged in monochrome—quarried down to the obdurate growlof waterstones— trundles overand back its basalt cannon balls, ballastfor its sunken hold. And no matter howthey grade the track, fence off the rankoverweeded gaps, it chills, like a placeyou might come to drown a mewling sack. Megan Kitching is an Ōtepoti Dunedin…
A Revelation Which before you can comprehend itResolves into a commonplace: all is vanity,Say, or suffering . . . Unhappy, the realizationThat the truth has outmanoeuvredDull you, Like a party that spilled intoThe street while you were in the kitchenRefreshing the punch, Making you surplusTo requirements, but not freeing youOf responsibility. The Bridge We had…
1. fight your imposter and repeat the mantra: you’re meant to be here, you’re allowed to be here 2. write the cards using your reobe sure to google your tohutōeven though you already know where they rest. . . or do you 3. over explainhow it wasn’t this easy last timeto recognise tuakanatheir mātaurangayour mātaurangain…
Callow Country with Indoor Bloodsuckers After Joanna Margaret Paul, Barrys Bay: Interior with Bed and Doll (1974), oil and watercolour on paper and hardboard Boy, this one’s a scorcher. The whole landscape prowls, panting, just beyond the front gate. In the maw of your mangy peninsulathe horses mow down scuffed-up grasses—browntop and cocksfoot—and rub their matted…
Big Fat Brown Bitch #23: She receives an election year visit from Christopher Luxon If you are sitting in a garage in South Auckland with your two brothers, tell your sisters to stand outside on the street, flag down flash cars and check for gang members or members of parliament. If you are sitting in…
Threads by Karen Zelas. Pūkeko Publications (2022). RRP: $25.00. Pb.130pp. ISBN 9780473656867. Reviewed by Hester Ullyart. Karen Zelas’ latest collection, Threads, is a love letter to family lines; past, present, future. Opening poems fall under the hush of ‘I want to say…’; here Zelas uses her most supple tool to hand – the word –…
Claudia Jardine Photography by Petra Mingneau We talk to the author of Biter, published April 2023, our guest poet for Takahē 107. The best poetry, like yours, shows strong themes, perhaps what could be called obsessions. Theway you use ‘double-cab utes in an urban environment’ in pieces with completely differentsubjects was really neat. Would you…