Visas
you're so welcome stranger
welcome to clean green NZ our home
you're welcome stranger
welcome to clean green NZ our home
you're welcome stranger
to clean green NZ our home
you're welcome stranger
to clean NZ our home
you're welcome stranger
to clean our home
you're welcome
to clean our home
you're
to clean our home
you're
to clean home
you're
to clean
to clean
to
last night I came to you
with the salt of my lover still on my skin
and we walked together
on the undulating curve of asphalt
tossed words
that caught under clouds
talked of spiders
and the webs they weave
talked of skins
and how they peel, or don’t peel
the crazy bend of mountain roads
and how everyone in Auckland
drives as if they’re on speed.
And I smelt the smell of gunpowder
on your skin
saw your eyes still flushed
with the memory of wartime
and your arms still heavy
with the weight of the injured.
I wanted to hold you then.
I wanted to tell you the story of Papa
of how she lies lost in the sea
of how Rangi still cries for her
and how she gives of her flesh willingly
to build cities, dumps, feed cows
and give the Tourism Board
something to boast about.
I wanted to say all this
but I think you already know:
deep inside, underneath the skin
of this country
it’s dark
but warm
we like the sound of our own hearts.
on a teapot elephant
one day
our teacher with flame-red hair brought in
a bag of clay
lush smooth squidginess
interrrupted by chips of rock
"for texture" she said
"for fibre" I thought, noting the comparison
between her worn clever hands squeezing out
long sausages of clay to make pots
and my discussions with
weary parents of constipated children
in the paediatric ward
but I did what she said
and took a handful of the stuff
squeezing it until an elephant's trunk snorted
between my fingers, a round bowl
of an abdomen, four scored blobs for feet
a child's drawing in hospital
and for the piece de resistance
I pinched out a teapot top,
two elephant's ears flowing in the long night
of my imagination, the trunk rising
in a vague sort of floppy post modernist avant garde salute
and after I had glazed it
painted it
and fired it
once to the temperature of an abandoned salt flat in a hot desert in Africa
and second to the temperature of a child struggling to draw breath overnight
and lastly to the contented sigh of a tired doctor coming home
to the quiet motel room and a single bed
I found the only tea
it could ever hold
was imaginary.
Flower
it is
a flower slowly unfurling inside you
tendrils spread
along the line of your belly
creeping up beside the ribcage
to tickle your eye.
an inside thought.
a whisper.
long ago as a girl
you had learned the secret
and now at last
it is your turn.
you hold the flower
whisper to it day by day
as it turns and sighs inside you
petals unfold
like tiny limbs
fed on nothing
but darkness
and love.
you trace words on your tongue
like blood, hold, heart
taste the salt taste of motherhood
for the first time,
know it will not be
the last.