bare legged

red truck red red fly past the many eyed cow     golden girl on Paparoa beach     high blue over garden steps seat sized for small legs and suddenly ants     o la’u tinā velvet down breathed brown from dark to light from black/red to sight     faces empty on the wooden table tomato red soup     to the bird sound of rain, first evening, first second third fit of pyjamas     the ascent of the steps was a triumph, but the view is impossible     pushing through the hedge shooosh into the square of sun     my new baby sister born with lollypops, orange and yellow flavoured and sugar sparkled cellophane     in a pram at the zoo a monkey comes through the bars and hops into the pram and I freak out     bare legged bare armed     that astonishment of looking in the book of lino patterns and remembering the green rectangles at floor level, hola!     a shout of green, then in a room called the world

the sound between a turn of wind

those black birds stitching up the air did you go there? was the place safe?     hallelujah Michael rowed a boat ashore and how we loved the thought of milk and honey over there     as I am sure you would agree it is very sad work settling my things alone     cousin brought his record to our house hang down your head tom dooley it went over and over     I’m dead. is it nothing? is it the space between the radio stations the sound between a turn of wind? I’m dead. does it taste like water?     “hey good lookin! whatcha got cookin” he says he’ll show me an octopus in the Leith     a wasp nest hidden in the scrub like a city     steep gradients of breath, your fingers across my white cloud skull     sleep anchored in the under belly dark of the macrocarpa     moe moe pepe da da da da da yun yuni chewy gummy ah ah motacar…     “from both sides now”      this tiny tomahawk I swing bounces off kahikatea: “where’s my Daddy, where’s my Daddy?”     joy to the world goes through the wash, but still we sing among the beans

one eye spinning

scrolling stacks the infinite library of language     elastic viaduct slight tunnel     “mama, you smell like sunshine” my heart’s eye said to me     bamboo outrigger – step up and take the last space quick to White Beach     to shake hands with a stranger – me – to turn, and see the panic melt     one eye at the bottom of the sea, one eye spinning rings in the sky     once it was your words gone missing, but now ‘even a lie is a psychic fact, a lie is a psychic fact’     once it was where and when and what and how and why and never went home any more    I hate Evelyn Hayes     who would have thought, the sound of air     once it was but now it’s the money it used to be a backyard but now it’s the telly, I had often pulled prickles out from my foot     touch the wall it opens. a dusty aisle bright wools on wooden cones     in Canada did you feel more free than in the dark of winter at the top of Hawea?

leave me cakes not flowers

breathe on     thank you thank you     so sad in one so young     here is your new home for life     nel mezzo di lightdarkdarklight     tongued visions and muddy hands     you’ll find the letters in the bottom drawer     messy, free     he’d’vebeen a bird if he could, a swift: anything to fly and sleep on the wing     for even the small things     one day trees will be called very important people: sto kaló      I am in China, the horse has vanished, and the bread is delicious     these days have seemed like a hundred years

the currency of answers

believing too much of what the others have said and not enough time to find out myself     o hazardous beauty – a bloodflower on the ice     fine gravel, the springs of heaven     so cool, you warm red hands on my stetson     hip deep in the shallow surf     embryonic blood red pulse: ideas birthed from black     alone, quiet - the centre of a ruby     under the trees, so glad not to be colour blind     one foot is hot, one foot is cold: I guess the buzzword is neuritis     no one knows quite how it goes, like this, this, this, this.   everyone left some minutes ago and nobody thought to listen      perhaps you sleep on the verandah     she wouldn’t get up she just stayed in bed

Poets:

Ursula Bethell
Janet Chambers
Nic Colville
Brian Flaherty
Paula Green
Bernadette Hall
Michael Harlow
Claire Hero
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
Michele Leggott
Graham Lindsay
Thérèse Lloyd
Selina Tusitala Marsh
John Newton

10.00 - 12 noon, Thursday 21 April 2005