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…
My Education from 1964 to I Forget Souls You can tell the rolls of dust under the bed are ghostsbecause their bodies are see-throughbut they have their own mind, their own fierce, unpredictable, grey mind.Your mind crouches inside your hard white head. Ghosts are actually souls. Ghosts, souls, dust—all the same. Your soul is a white…
There was a long haul in the middlewhere the tracks faded into dust.I was out there for some time.When I got back nothing seemed to fit.The worst part was becoming angry.I lost myself in there.At least the illusion of myself.I grew envious of thosewho possessed what seemedeasy comfort, from a distance.Like a child I grieved.I…
Kawekawe kōrero Ko tā te ngutu he whakahua kauMā ngā tini kawekawe ia te toro atu,Rongo ai, whakaaro ai Toro mai rā e ngā kāwai Kawea mai te kupu Tāmoea nei au i āu kōrero Whātero mai i ōu arero tini, — Ko ēnā iaia mōnehu Kare tīwheta mai ki au, Kōwirihia raunatia ai Me…
i. We, our family—Joe, baby, kelpie, me—live on the rain-wrestling smudges to Sydney’s west,Gundungurra and Dharug country Our house, a sweaty pram push from Gargaree,that sacred gully stamped with a mile-long loop of racing bitumen Our kelpie likes to run the loop, mark greens creeping up to light dystopian cracks,chase squawky boys circling:sulphur-crested snow flurries that drift…
It was the year of the caved-in ceiling.Water ran through everything and brought down the attic with it.Everyone was sure that the rain would have to stop one of these days,and still it sluiced down, right through the roofand the duvetsand finally into the carpetleaving a dark smell that never left and a stainso symmetrical…
whanganui, ōtepoti, whakatū,i kite tātou i a Witi,me āna kōrero,āna waiata,āna paki. whanganui, ōtepoti, whakatū,i kite tātou i a Witi,tēnei tōtara haematame tana pōtae kōhure,tana koti parāone,tāna memene. tēnei tōtara haematame mārohirohii ngā wā katoa.i mua,i muri:te kaituhi mātāreremō āke tonu atu. [English language ‘translation’ a mōteatea for Witi (Ihimaera) whanganui, dunedin, nelson.we saw…
Help him. Help him, the woman says. I cannot bear it.What happened?He was coming to see me. A tire blew out.A new tire. A steel radial tire. Oh please.Please save my boy. Get him out.But this is a tombstone, I say.It is a grave.Can you not hear him scream? the woman cries.She tears at granite…
I want to believe in miracles I say, spilling sad energy everywhere but all the birds are fighting over wet bread in the parking lot What kind of miracles? You ask, dutifully The kind that escapes like smoke the moment you notice it Leaving the air stuffy with expectation, a shortness of breath And maybe…
Antipode You went to Big Riverand then you went to Mount Emptyand you went to Valladolidand put flowers in the ground. I waited in Newtown.I took my time, not waiting too hard,finished humanity’s smaller projects,crossed off things in a red notebook. But the apocalypse never gained momentum,because you went to Valladolidand put flowers in the…