Billboard

Directly opposite the Mt. Albert
Baptist Church on a billboard
out front of Rocket Park they advertise
The Lesbian Road Trip Art Show
at Charlotte Gallery in New Lynn
the Sunday schoolers were calling
for a new curriculum (to bring us closer
to the message) but I’m not sure
this is the message they had in mind
they sent out petitions like napalm bombings
while ignoring the drug dealers gathering
in the propulsion mechanism of the rocket
dishing out ten-dollar squares of crack and coke
as parents swing their Audis into the bays
of the New World Fresh Collective
swipe their Am-Exes their Visas
while a short walk away a young man
is knifed to death in an alleyway
adjoining the mess hall of the old college
where our colonialists and prime ministers
sat on cold wooden seats getting piles
the young man whose life was taken
in that dark alley happened to attend the Art
School where I sat at a desk for 8 hours a day
learning names and checking lists I remember
our Head of School sent an email with the words
“died…in a brutal way” and on the bus home I passed
Rocket Park the Mt. Albert Baptist Church
the Fresh Collective the billboard that advertised
The Lesbian Art Show when those words gripped
me in a tourniquet like an Afterpay account that says
they’ve sucked all of my wages before I’ve even seen the money
I considered how they should have started a petition
to stop the violence on our doorsteps or at least went along
to the show in New Lynn before setting the new curriculum.