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Chris Parsons
New Zealand

Chris Parsons taught in Japan for six years and now works as a psychologist in schools in New Zealand. He has had poems published in the Otago Daily Times, Snorkel and Southern Ocean Review. He is interested in the power of culture and its struggle with the multinational economy.

index
little boy shopping


Cowboy hatted Japanese carefully herd
into subway trains, temporarily blinded
by a million kiloton department
store. One flash and all
our civilizations are made powder.

Here in another new America,
I must bend my vowels
with weightier US gravity. All
geiger countered, cleared and multinationald,
were growing tall and Texan.

Ninjas stalk living rooms though.
After dark people suit up
and hidden kimonos come out.
Picking hopefully through broken furniture
and sweeping out grey debris.





riding the carbon cycle


Ashes to ashes, grey feathers
falling in zigzags quietly down.
Fire, an answer for everyone
on circled days like this,
gives back orange sunset warmth.

Dust to dust, our khaki
grains reassembling for different uses.
Earth, the final receiver,waiting
to hold us all again
olive arms so carefully embracing.

To the grave, another journey
we unpack for so carefully.
Destinations unadvertised and blackly ignored,
waiting eternally. Fellow travellers recognised
at last fiery golden second.