Poems by Rhys Feeney
seeing a video of my great-grandma from 180,000km away
Rhys Feeney
Published on
page 18 of Tarot #3
(Dec 2021)
mum sends me a video of my great-grandma
framed by concrete & balloons & the carpark-coloured sky
a canted view of her waving out the window to my family below
it’s her 104th birthday & the 13th month of lockdowns
evening clapping & beautiful bloo passports
~
i try to imagine what’s it like
i print off analogy maps tht i use to teach year nines simile
i fill them in: what are the aspects of this
what do these feel like?
~
she was born during the first world war
had a child to an american GI
consumed a bottle of whiskey a week
i hate to admit therapists have been right
but it must be one foot then another foot
~
i sell my body for 55 hours a week
& it feels ordinary
~
i am just one of 78 billion agricultural animals
~
the titanic sank for two hours
people had time to distract themselves
~
watching the video i can’t help but feel like
tears would be a commodity
~
no one in close family has died
but when they do the content will remain
the thumblike selfies w generous ceiling views
will acquire reactions in-between sponsored posts
~
all the while a new wave of intergenerational tension is crashing down
in the form of the hatred for skinny jeans
it took me so long to realise i didn’t hate boomers
i just hate landlords
~
tht i was so righteous in poems about politics
when i was buried in the landfill of propaganda
~
how is it different when my grandma believes
tht the EU wouldn’t allow the sale of bent cucumbers
we are all in some big tent
we all are hooked by something
~
bc between the crying & the working
how was i supposed to know rocketlab
were sending US military payloads into space?
~
how was i supposed to know about shelly bay & the wellington company
when i was too busy killing the planet stuck in commuter traffic
~
i can’t possibly drag myself out of the primordial soup of the infodemic
to go live in the woods now
all i do is watch
paralysed by ddos of petitions
flailing my arms like a tube man
sad reacting to every post
the years start coming & they don’t stop coming
Rhys Feeney
Published on
page 51 of Tarot #3
(Dec 2021)
some things get funnier the more they happen
like getting a lynx africa 3-in-1 set for Christmas
it is not the same with years
each is long & full of gruelling personal growth
like how i thought the year was a palindrome
until i realised tht i didn’t really know
what a palindrome was
but still it had a certain symmetry
like: one cat dies / then the other
i share a vape at a party in the warm country
/ think about grandparents in the cold country
waiting for bake off after the pm announcement
still there’s something to be said for the good moments
how i hiked up the hill with tht tinder date
just in time to look through a telescope
& see two planets the closest
they’ve been in the sky for 400 years
the oval smudge of one planet’s
rings / the glinting moon of the other
how the year started with birds mimicking sirens /
& now when i sit in the garden listening
they’re making bird sounds
