I walk to the pool with bare feet on the stone path. I lounge in the shallow end in brightly coloured togs and cheap sunglasses, reading a book about the state of medical care in challenged communities in the Horowhenua. Continue reading swimswim
We would file into changing rooms with pale-blue walls and wooden benches. Backpacks and sports bags hung from hooks while we shimmied underwear out from under/tartan skirts and hiked up navy blue togs. Blouse off, straps up, bra eased out from underneath. Ribbons removed from ponytails, hair bundled up and crammed under swimming caps in regulation house designs. Continue reading swim
inch-long lines nearly faded now
/ wounds inflicted by spiral binding
/ at the start of semesters gone by
/ bookselling is a contact profession Continue reading A catalogue of my body’s scars (to date)
I went back under shortly after the nurse spoke to me. There are no more memories of the post-surgical ward, where they watch you so carefully to make sure your body remembers how to breathe and pump blood and fire neurons and all the things that it might not be so crash hot at after however many hours of general anaesthetic. Eventually the machines attached to me and the observations taken by nurses came to an agreement. I was deemed fit to return to the land of the living. Continue reading Endurance
Exciting developments in writing life, one of which is a long time coming in a couple of ways. In the more general, longer term way, I FINALLY have a creative piece in a print literary journal. Hurrah! In the specific, shorter term way, I submitted this piece over a year ago, and it was allocated to the second issue of the journal. But now, it’s out! Issue 2 of Atlas Literary Journal is out, and my piece, ‘Trading Pain’ is in it. It’s about hospital and scary things like emergency surgery and ketamine and nasogastric tubes. I believe it’s being … Continue reading new work – atlas/pantograph punch
The first plant I have ever successfully grown is a small pot of coriander. I can’t even claim to have grown it, really, just not let it die. It’s in a giant teacup that I inherited when a flatmate four flats ago left to go overseas. I kept fruit in it, but my kitchen is tiny and the teacup was relocated to a bookshelf when a rice cooker took countertop precedence. There were still oranges and kiwifruit in it, and they sat there forgotten, gently moulding. When I remembered, I put the bowl outside and it’s lived there ever since. The pot of … Continue reading coriander, basil, corn
last time all of us a smaller, self-contained, of the moment kind of all of us we sat at the water she went into the ocean her feet cautious then enraptured the elongated vowels of a toddler whose life is overwhelming/exciting/in danger pick one she’s not sure herself trying to stamp down the water as it licks her ankles swift kicks and sun hats and sandals up on the sand we watched and laughed and talked and said we’ll keep in touch Continue reading Salt Lick
I trim the stems of
hospital tulips with my
ostomy scissors Continue reading Hospital haiku. December 4–8.
the curious circumstances where the cool kids across the way off-season students play music from their kindergarten days and the appropriateness (for the unwilling listener) that the closing track of the evening is ‘suicidal girls’ because of the way that i would do truly anything to get that racket gone their speakers and voices both Continue reading get off my lawn
how 2009 began. part i. In honour of the release of Emilyn Brodsky’s new album, here is a bit of a recollection of the first time I saw her/heard of her. Which was also the first time I ever went to New York. And the first time that I saw Amanda Palmer. It’s one of those nights that isn’t easily forgotten. This is the lead-up. On the first night that I ever spent in New York, I went to a show. It was January – only just. Patti Smith wrapped up her Bowery Ballroom gig to see in the new year, and … Continue reading 2009
