Photo by Jenna carverPhoto by Jenna Carver

 

From the January 2012 issue of a fine line

Convergence

after editing the memoir of Dr David Jennings, 1900-1982

Your voice, his voice.
Finishing his sentences
like a long-time lover, languid,
anticipating the very breath, the essence,
among the rumpled sheets - yellowed pages,
dermatome slices, tissue-thin. You decipher
random hieroglyphs, each depicting
his world and view: mountains and passes,
in tense, in hue, naming ...

recall
that limitless Te Anau night:
black water
magnesium-flare of celestial bodies
lying together
touching
infinity

Karen Zelas

Performance

a found and enhanced poem

Your silhouette in black and white creates
dynamic shifts of exotic beauty
embracing us
in a million kisses to our fervid skin.
From here to there
in a momentous swoop, dip and swirl
of love and humanity, sharing life's
humility at the ordinary, so too
your song in the dark, with style, rhythm
and tireless energy, fluidly passing
its meticulous theme
from dancer to dancer.
Its boldness
capturing the inner soul
entrances, nourishes, rejuvenates
spirits, as we watch in awe
our Royal New Zealand Ballet.
Encore. Encore. Encore.

Debbie Williams

Mummy

She lay, obediently, soon smoke, like clay.
A remnant for remembrance, supine
and heat-still with drawn, wax
eyes, drawn lovingly to simulate
pared death, a dormancy, mere interval.

We entered, all entered into compensatory
pretence, making her more comfortable
by tucking in her quilt, each
giving up his seat, each hushed and
reverent, to sanitate her peace,
feeding sparrows her final bread,
while trolley-clank leant normalcy to grief.

Fred Simpson

Windsurfing

‘But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near... ‘

Poised
on a slender bow-wave's edge
she leans against her red sail's
fickle strength, silver tresses
wafting - a cypsela
in a wayward breeze.

Skimming
Lake Taupo's shimmering cloak
she sees the three mountains
illusions of eternity
as she surfs the currents, rides the wind
while a caldera churns below.

Smiling
she scatters waves of plenitude
that rise and fall and rise again,
muses of ripples on a farther shore
while Time stands
still.

Thakshan Fernando

Facescape

I glimpse my face in the wing mirror

Straight ahead wind-lashed grassland
clothes the Wither Hills
Clumps of vegetation cling
to the layers of loess over greywacke
that built these jaundiced mounds

Beneath a coiffure of nimbus curls
walking tracks network shadowed valleys
skirting historic scars of over grazing and erosion

The föehn wind ruffles tufts of tussock
on the brow and flushes hot across the plains
kissing the lips of the wide mouthed Wairau River

Turning left towards Blenheim
we leave the deeply weathered Wither Hills
but not the facescape in the wing mirror

Mary Bell Thornton

Waikato Mist


Outside a thick Waikato
mist is swirling.

Inside my head
voices are waging war:
voices from my past
voices from friend and foe.

Each voice declares
itself, head tilted
tongue wagging
spear raised.

But I have no quarrel
this Sunday morning
so I ask them to move on,
and stand up to get on with
the most ordinary of tasks.

Anne Curran

For Anne Bradstreet (d.1672)

and see here, she bends, to glory
in the rightness scratched from
yet another grandchild's death

a pious woman's place is primly set
at table, in the kitchen, by the wet
wide grave that eats her future's hope: humble,
trim her low candle, and meek; heart trembles
subdued, nightly grinds her nib, each worn page
pricking earnest at her membrane of rage,
frustration's sister, a pious order
that defeats common sense, a rough border
on the shroud that, yet living, she must wear
so Men can stroll above her in free clear air

Anne, you don't fool me,
your bubble rises hard;
the throb of your heart
beating right through your art

John Adams

Today

Today I will walk away
to be in my self alone
with the silence
of my own sacred twisted
tangled tousled early morning self.

I do not have to
relate in the appropriate way
or pretend to be interested
or trick you into thinking I am normal.

Just for today though.
Tomorrow you can have me back.

Kristina Jensen

Thirst

the sphinx's grip whitens
but it does not feel snow
in a bubble

a parched manner bears even upon
numerous sandy grains and one
conjunction lengthens this even more

I like to work long
words in order
to show off
my regard
for them

this ear is for forgetting

a pyramid presses heavy
from onset onto well
beyond dusk

it does not know what it is
it may retain a granularity of feel
it could bear that stench of rotten potatoes

do you believe you could?

one touched me once and it seemed
blue this one is a copy
but intact at that

do you remember this ear?

John Adams

 

From the November 2011 issue of a fine line

Iguanodon

No stag drunk on reek of hinds
dashing antlers into branches
but a log of lizard head gatecrashing,
grinding greens in high aspen's dappled awning,
mother of all tall ground-pounders,
thumper thighs bearing
both bulk of towering torso
and meaty-plump forearms.
Like it or lump it.

The beast had ham-fisted
banana-palm, philodendron,
marijuana, rhododendron;
crushed the patch of tarragon
and grundered through liana.
Now stops. Rotates -
a caudal graunch of tectonics,
eyeball's swivel and glitter,
in stillness takes me in.

Hugh Major

 

During the Storm

I dreamed a fierce wind
tossed me to your side of the bed
where you slept all unaware
of my arrival. When I kissed you,
you awoke with a smile
and we blew each other away.

Laurice Gilbert


From the September 2011 issue of a fine line

Short Takes

Hunker Down Sparrow,
Balance Once More;
That Gust Too Strong,
Jump! - Airborne!

Wheeling -
The Sparrow Snatches
The Locust In Mid-Flight.

My Balcony Compost -
The Sparrows Quite Drunk
On The Rotten Apples.

Nine p.m. -
A Winter Evening;
The Sparrows On
Lambton Quay,
Quite Deafening

Listening -
Not A Breath Of Wind;
My Wind Chimes Tinkling.

General Anaesthetic -
Everything Closes Down.

Jon Schrader

 

Finding Genealogy

Dame Alison Holst decides
to research war heroes.
Everyone can do it for free
on the Ancestry.com website
but I couldn't do it without
my parents in the same room
to question them about Jack Curran,
my paternal grandfather,
a celebrated war hero.

And so, on an Anzac afternoon
I pick up a folder of papers
collated by an Aunty, now gone.
I breathe more deeply,
sit more quietly
as I read Jack's histories:
a life of military battles,
marriage to Dulcie,
proprietorship of the Palace Hotel,
finally cancer of the larynx.


Meanwhile, there is some small
quarrel between my parents.

Anne Curran

Walk Towards Twilight

In the space between
day and dusk
where sun
and sky are one
or the other
and the white foam
of breaking waves
becomes landed clouds
in a coastal walk
of cataract vision
veiled in mists
of suggestion
and dim recognition
memory hovers
on the edges of land
with a slim hold.

It is an uncertain time
tide shifts pebbles and sand
margins and marks
on the watery page
move and fold
word is blurred
meaning obscured
by the child's mind-
dread of the dark
when the door shuts.

Suzanne Herschell


sunset drives
a lone swimmer
towards the Norfolk pine

Anne Curran

 

From the July 2011 issue of a fine line:

Jean

At last the waka
pulls from clinging clay
rides the wild water
soars the rainbow spray.

Heave, heave
the anchor stone.
Te wairua
fly swiftly.
See the plume
of huia brightness
pierce the gloom of night.

Rise, rise
the paddles
to the sea.

Maureen Sudlow

 

Diagnosis

What has to wait grows heavy.
Rows of chairs in submission. Salt-early,
it is easy to hope. I prefer to stand,
listening, pretending to be a fish.
When I look at stones I don't exist. Instead of
running, it is better to float. Until the event occurs,
if it does. Strangers are statements, pretending
to be questions, pretending to know me
because they have my name and my birth day.
You must say my name twice, three times,
like speaking into a seashell. All the buttons
on my coat are gone. It is not uncommon but
I'm tired. I can't anymore.

Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

 

Winter Moon

She dresses the buildings and strokes the shiny bitumen,
her light bathes the city in lurex,
the shadows make holes in her cloak.
Within these holes bad acts are hatched
as theft steals towards his quarry
and murder murmurs indecent thoughts.

Beyond the city the moon walks softly
amongst the herds and flocks and hedges
the shadow holes are smaller here,
the water mirrors her silver tread,
theft is less visible
and murder hides in houses while neighbours sleep

At sea the moon walks her path on water
to bobbing crucibles,
floating in their horizon-bound pools
theft is contained within each craft,
and murder frolics...
with the fish below.

Derryn Pittar

 

Interface

Janus-like, the poet seeks a muse:
facing inwards scours memory banks,
the way gumbooted children at the edge
of a river poke sticks in muddy holes
to surprise creatures that delight and frighten,
then, squealing, run for cover, or for something
- some person, or a memory of a person, or a time
when it was safe to feel, to say whatever
came into their heads, to be alone without
being lonely. Because there was the past, held
gently in two chubby hands, like that duckling
we found, all fluff and cheep, until
the real world caught up with it - the outward
gaze: the clang, the clash, the reason, the butt,
the buttoning-up, that meaning-giving thread
intertwined, twisted sometimes. Tangled.
Taut knots, not the predictable reefs,
nor the bowlines I never mastered.

Cousies and cossies, while shifting sands whisper
of a tsunami building off South America.

Karen Zelas

 

Goodwill to all men

Elbows adrift he cleared the way to the
raspberry stall ignoring the line of women.
Goodwill to all men but stuff if he was gonna
queue up behind this tinsel of females.

He had other things to do on a Christmas
eve, only the wife always counted on him
for the berries and no wardrobe of women
was gonna make him muck around all day.

Bloke refused to serve him 'cos he jumped
the queue. Hell he'd never managed leapfrog
at school so what sort of fantasy saw him
jumping this load of lovelies.

Blowing a raspberry in the stallholder's face
he headed off to face trolleys trundled
in time to Silent Night or whatever music
enticed customers to part with their cash.

Bing was crooning about the snow
falling, so even he tossed in a pack of
mincemeat pies and shivered
as he passed the freezers.

The blond kid on checkout picked up his
vibes along with the raspberries and pies.
She bagged the lot before venturing, be
goodwill to all men when it's over sir.

Ruth Arnison
Published in the Otago Daily Times

 

Ratatouille

Casting her eye over the meal
the youngest gathered a forkful
and asked

if this, redirecting her eyebrows
to perform an indicative trick,
had a name

When her Father answered Ratatouille
she replied, all the cast or just
the main characters?

Ruth Arnison
Published in Off the Coast, Fall 2009

 

A Bofors Gun

When we were kids we played on a Bofors gun
grey and stark it perched on a flattened hilltop
meant to confuse Jap planes the hidden gun fired at

Back in the real-fear time it had its troops
busy looking convincing playing at gunnery
- our mother boiled their tea-water in her copper

A seaplane flew over Wellington once for a look-see
then scrammed back to its sub, and no-one noticed
- it may have been impressed, since no more came

After the real gun left the other lingered
came in useful again for playing on
- few now to remember its real wood

John C. Ross


From the May 2011 issue of a fine line:

Semaphore

Two scouts

finding fun in a far-flung alphabet

by gestures' clockface exercise

swore silently across a valley.

 

Would have peeved an earnest Baden Powell.

Furthermore, like Morse it should be serious.

B-A-R-S-T

Oh, flag it.

 

Hugh Major

 

 

Earthquake

Christchurch 22/2/11

 

Concrete, furniture, computers,

rocket against walls, floor, ceiling.

 

I shrink my shoulders, kneel

and slink under my desk like a fox,

crouch, don't move. The silence gallops

like a shadowy mare.

 

I trawl in the concrete dust,

push it into and out of my lungs,

listen to their efforts, like the hands

of a clock, winding down, struggling

for its last beat;

 

then, like the fox, sneak from my lair,

lick moisture to my lips,

 

stand, stare at death's confident

punctuation;

lifeless workmates beneath the grammar,

of the concrete moment.

 

I look down from the window and see a dog

straining his head through the detritus;

See firemen pointing water hoses.

 

My feet won't move.

Someone from the street looks up, waves.

Hope shivers through me.

 

Caroline Glen

 

Poetry Workshop, Bath (UK)

Last night I went to Mr B's again,

trod the creaking treads to the upper room,

where in a circle eleven women

sat waiting for me, and for Mr B. 

How good it was to be back among friends:

shelves of new books lining old walls, smoke of

incense setting the scene, an eastern journey

to the realm of renga with Mr B.

Ah, how I wish every day could be spent

leaping through seasons, summer balm beaches

to autumn's crescent moon, the heavy wraps

of winter to a spring of bluebell blooms.

At Mr B's I would be ever content

writing poetry. Of this I have dreamt.

 

Margaret Beverland

 

After the Holidays

Cold, impersonal, blind square worms of journey

lift us up and down, but never out

to where we want to go.

 

Views framed by steel, and glass, replace wide spaces,

of verdant naturous willowy waftings,

and indigo, well - deep watery dives.   

 

Wistful thoughts and smell of warm grass,

impose themselves, nudge and niggle themselves

into the minds eye.

 

Remembering the dog day, swim sore, sun-beat 

afternoons of laze and languidness,

it's cold comfort that the bank balance

is in the black again.

 

Susan Howard

NZPS Home