Two poems - takahē

Dynamite

I.m. Jessie Riethmuller

In Hornby everyone is doing their best.
People are wearing shoes in PAK’nSAVE

and the shelves in Goodstüff are abundantly
stocked and clean. In Valentine’s Buffet,

the server asks God to bless my mum, and
comps her birthday meal. The office manager

at the big garage calls me ‘doll’, esteem for a
grateful client. We don’t romanticise, not now,

not then, diesel buses on the overbridge for
trouble at the pool, the party that started in

the house and ended in the street, and yet,
and yet. From rail to mall to roundabout we

potter on the delta of our dry riverbed,
one unforgettable storm away from un-

imaginable ch-ch-ch-changes. Even so,
Matatiki. Even so, Matatiki me Te Huruhuru

Ao o Horomaka remind us that where we
are above water, the people of Tūāhuriri

once were amongst birds. In between is the
shingle, good in an earthquake, a new home

for everyone who fled to stay, the last inland
migration. Scared together we carried our babies

high in the Countdown carpark. It is only natural,
all of it, says my mother-in-law, from the seat of

the river. It’s far out here, this bight. Don’t forget
how when Dad and Uncle Sam dug the well out

back, they finished it, you know, with dynamite.

Salt circle

In spring the baby was three months old
and we came into the remembered light
earthquake shook, nighttime drunk,
shedding muslins and hooded linens.

I invited my aunt as I had to our wedding
because we were in love with the baby
and wanted them named in front of their kin.
My aunt gave us a gift: a pair of plastic training pants.

There was always a next stage, this I knew,
as far away as sleep, as remote as the moon.
At some point, true, there would be
a walking baby who, in theory, would

need to use a toilet. At some point too
during the languored afternoon
my aunt pinched her fingers tight
to bless the baby on their forehead

a little way down from the fontanelle.
I could hear her whispered prayer
but not, save Christ, its words.
No salt circle to protect my threshold,

which had been leaking milk and tears
throughout the season. Just me
and the blessed baby, for whom till then
I only wished sweet secular dreams,

now touched and ripening in the shade.
Even so, the blessing flowered in time
when the walking toddler
still in nappies put the training pants

on a naked doll. And it flowered again,
later, when the next child, born sparring,
asked why that big building had a big T
on it. It’s for Jesus, said their father.

There was only a snort. ‘Who’s Jesus?’
I had my circle, had my wishes after all,
singing come to me, my children, come
to our home, come to my petty hearth.

Megan Clayton (she/they) writes and performs from Ōtautahi Christchurch, with poems recently published in The Spinoff, Cordite, and Catalyst. Megan’s collection Dynamite won the 2026 John O’Connor First Book Award and will be launched on National Poetry Day with Sudden Valley Press.