Dusk Walk
After rain, the dusk carries her
soft as a strand of inner music.
The low song she moves in clots
when with the hiss of wheels
through footpath damp
a cyclist materialises beside her.
A Staffordshire bulldog lopes there too,
neckerchief for collar, leather belt for leash.
The bloke, in camo clothes, has his head hooded
like a periscope, but from its den
his eyes slide with an illicit glisten
along her figure then face.
She knows from the way he bites his words,
‘Y’all right?’ (meaning,
Frightened you, didn’t I?
As intended)
why the dog holds
its own body as it does
slingshot tense
spine full stretch
ears as if buttered
to its scalp
so that spindle-smooth
it runs with whittled swiftness
the wish in its skull,
deeper than language,
to melt not into water
but the shadow of evaporate.
Emma Neale is an author and an editor. Her poetry collection, Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2024) won the Mary and Peter Biggs Poetry Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for 2025, the same year she also received the Janet Frame Prize. Her recent novel, Maybe Baby (2026) has just been published by Bateman Books.
