Bad Vegans

Two children sit listening to the rain.
His fingers drum upon his seatbelt, she keeps
Checking social media, despite getting zero bars.
Grown now, they are no longer beholden
To adults idling at the pub, or the menace
Of the one-armed bandit stealing their dinner.

The rain continues downward, a thick pelt.
Maneuvering out of the Skyline, they find
Themselves surrounded by mallards.
Despite her chiding, he tears off pieces
Of cashew cheese, which the ducks beg
For, lamellae sifting out bits of gravel.

With him as pied piper, she plays pallbearer.
Smaller than a breadbin, larger than a lunchbox—
But still, what heft, cremains. It was sunny earlier,
And now these swollen droplets blight them,
Conspicuous townies at the park,
Seemingly picnicking in the downpour. Quack quack.

Conscientiously, she invokes a stream
Around the base of a protective oak tree.
Ashes, they called them: The shrapnel
Of a human being, a doggy bag of dust,
Remains roly-polying in a rock tumbler.
She did not look closely at the grit.

His turn now, he takes just two steps
Before dumping the boxful on his shoes
Like a child dropping an ice cream
With no one to hand him another.
Mallards investigate, fragmented bone
Like crushed seashells under their neon feet.

The siblings do not stay very long.
Fallen boughs of eucalyptus in hand,
They try to lift the ivory stain a little,
Till the sodden soil. On the drive home,
They bicker about mineral leaching,
Waterfowl indigestion, and what flowers

They hope their mother will grow.

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Nicola Andrews (Ngāti Paoa, Pākehā) lives on Ramaytush Ohlone territory. They are the author of Sentimental Value (Ghost City Press, 2023), and their chapbook Māori Maid Difficult is forthcoming with Tram Editions. They won the 2023 AAALS Indigenous Writers Prize for Poetry.