∞ | Conjugating | untitled | Highly Commended (list only)

∞

Charlotte Trevella, Rangi Ruru Girls' School, Christchurch

      but you
    insist
          that night
is numerable.
 

           see,
      the evening grows
          milky with
pulsating stars,
            yet you
     finger the sky
             searching for
          some essence
of the cold
               infinity
           we swim
      in,
        every time
           find
              only the
           spherical wall of
this universe,
             you say
       one day it
             will have a
numerical value.


          but logic and
      symmetry
             make it all
          so simple,
                  on magpie
                                 hill
          today I watched
              those damned
                               birds
                  drive a hawk
                       away, wheeling
and
screeching, the wire
          fence pressed
      against my
                face
           material,
            solid.


And remember
            those summers,
at night
        the
tarmac was
     too warm
           under our
           feet,
       it burned
                 imprints
           with its realness.

 
    we would
               laugh
       about it afterwards
             in cool
               grass,
       display our
    blisters, (mine were
          always better
        than yours)

 
        but now
you tell me
      the universe
           will never
       be the same
      for two
              nights,
     it is still
           expanding,
     exploding into
                      sharded
           light years of
creation


           and
     ‘look up.'
                you say.
      above us
                   only
      other-worldly
                   suns
        that burrow
            into my
                      retina.

 

Conjugating

Emily Adlam, Diocesan School for Girls, Auckland

amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant
this morning, I wrote out 126 forms
of the verb to love
in Latin

how wonderfully strange
to spend half an hour
writing amabam amabas amabat
I was loving, you were loving, he was loving

I can talk about love in six tenses
and for many different people
and of course we all know
that love can be
passive
or active

I can say amabit, he will love
or amatus sunt, they were loved
and even amaverimus, we will have loved

and furthermore, I can say it all
in two different moods
funny to think if a word having moods
I should like to think of words
being in joyful moods or exalting moods
in fact the only choices
are subjunctive or indicative
rather dense and depressing ways to describe them

but oddly, these moods translate
the same
and there seems a beautiful pointlessness
in being able to say
amaveram or amavissem
both meaning I had loved

but perhaps the best is amaris
what a name it would be for a child!
what a gift to give!
whenever anyone called her name,
'Amaris, come here!'
'Amaris, you're late,'
they would really be saying
you are loved, you are loved, you are loved


(untitled)

Jessie Evernden, Lincoln High School, Christchurch

 

Repeat me my painting.
I'd colour you different in the night i see now.
I heard they whispered you madness.
I've seen it in the way you close your eyes.
And i know you stand at my window.
But my lips clamp.

I remember once upon a midnight.
Sleep knocking in my mind.
Knives tapping at my chest.

Memory Favour my forgetful mind.
Spin me comfortable among light rains.

Break my window.
Night pains my walls And I.
And I remember.

I Havent forgotten.
Just resting my humming mind.
Could i deny the fire flame?

My saving grace.

Highly Commended:

A Poem About a Poem, Emily Adlam
Conspiracy Theories, Emily Adlam
En Garde, Emily Adlam
For the Empty, Emily Adlam
Looking up from Tartarus, Emily Adlam
Poetry in the Garden, Emily Adlam
Translating Laughter, Mary Dennis, Wellington
The politics in Belarus, Sophia Frentz, Tauranga
all star, Amy Pepper, Hastings
Seventh night in a row, Mengyun Rao, Auckland
What Snow Feels Like, Mengyun Rao
Then, as now, Kate Slaven, Christchurch
Family history, Charlotte Trevella
Recipe, Charlotte Trevella
stage secrets, Alisha Vara, Christchurch.

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