the Pahi Hotel fire

When I ask her about the fire, her lips
purse like a newspaper’s crimpled edge,
and my pencil poised, my notepad ready,
she opens her lady’s purse buying time.

And she’s got my attention that’s for sure:
inside’s a grey smudge about to be written,
the newsprint mystery-ink of brushed leather
left open, by design, like a gap, like a silence.

And there’s tension in the attention it draws
as she draws out a package, the unfiltered 
cigarettes she doesn’t smoke herself
but folds from the folds of the fabric anyway. 

And she uses them to trace the outline 
of some scenario, indicating where some fool
left a burning cigarette on a ledge—
in a billiards room—

where the dry lining led the flame to the roof—
where it had a stronghold discovered 
too late, too late!
And she closes the purse

brushing the last smudge of a rumour
from the ledge,
repeating how she doesn’t smoke herself
and her lips purse like a newspaper’s crimpled edge.

---

Brent Cantwell is a New Zealand writer from Timaru, South Canterbury, who lives with his family in the hinterland of Queensland, Australia. He teaches high school English and has been writing for pleasure for twenty-five years. He has recently published in takahē, Westerly, Meniscus, and Plumwood Mountain. His first collection of poetry, tether, was published by Recent Work Press in October 2023.