My passenger

A driver’s seat dream, I, my car,

stopped at the lights with a view

of the university clock tower,

its high face, my passenger

saying Back in a minute,

getting out, trotting off

after someone he knows, a woman

walking with a large bag

in the shade of the academic hedge.

But there is no back, there is

no minute, the lights

change, the flow, it goes, and

I’m the driver, I drive away,

I leave my passenger behind

Jackson lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin. They were born in Cumbria, England, and grew up in Australia, where Recent Work Press published their fourth poetry collection, A coat of ashes, based on their award-winning PhD thesis. In New Zealand, their poems have appeared in takahē, Landfall, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, the Otago Daily Times and other journals. They are on the committees of the New Zealand Poetry Society and Dunedin’s monthly poetry reading group Octagon Collective. writerjackson.com 

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