Building your rejection letters into a pyre
and upon that, building my church
because even in literary publishing
there must be an eponymous “you”
hidden somewhere, lurking
in the depths of your radically indented
stanzas.

How do I reconcile dreams of greatness
with such spectacular failures?

It’s like Scooby and the gang letting loose
an actual ghost and not just an old man
in a white sack.

It’s like the inevitable mathematical outcome
of calling your journal ‘Vicenarian Excesses’
and including my poems about make-up sex.

It’s like being trapped in a portaloo
and expecting it to teleport you to France.

It’s like Jonah and the whale
except the whale is an angel-haired hipster
who boldly proclaims: writer! academic! poet! on her Instagram bio.

You see yourself as the grand arbiter of happiness,
walking artistic success round the block
on a cruelty-free faux leather harness.

Judgement falls right on top of me
like a vindictive anvil out to settle scores
or like stubbing my toe on
the crazy pavement of disappointments.

It’s like having a Nescafé machine
filled with inexcusable love poems.

It’s like being told
you’re the Florence Foster Jenkins of bad poetry
but secretly knowing that
Florence Foster Jenkins is the Florence Foster Jenkins of bad poetry.

I don’t think my poetry is speculative enough
for these dark days
and when everyone else seems to be pushing daisies through pages
all the hipster poets have come back from the dead
with their deconstructed community art projects
and their pixelated nipple tassels
and their syndicated rejection letters.

because my mother sang Samoan and English nursery rhymes and lullabies
because vibrant illustrations and dramatic stories in my cousins’ children’s biblical set
because Mrs Plank and her bag of poetry tricks at primary school
because Bess (dear Bess) and her Highway Man
because the pen is gentler than the sword
because the page doesn’t judge, it just waits and listens
because paper absorbs grief and bitterness safely
because art speaks a thousand truths when the artist is cowering
because the interaction of words, imagery and emotions
because compliments and ego
because I miss the laughs and stories of beloved bodies who have returned to spirit
because I’m nostalgic for the celestial womb
because I walk through the valley of the vā
because pain is sometimes necessary
because secrets aren’t meant to be dangerous
because I’m no longer afraid
because they told me not to talk about it
because I stopped giving a fuck what they told me
because I hate you
because I use to hate me
because he said I’m nothing like my father
because sometimes I don’t have the capacity to voice my depression, trauma and anxiety in a coherent sentence
because of the heartfelt stories I receive in return
because I occasionally weep for both the sorrow and grace of humankind
because not enough people were writing about sexual abuse and mental health
because what if that was me?
because that was / is me
because empathy in a world where too many people don’t give a shit
because how do you know they’re not Jesus?
because be like Jesus
because hurt
because healing
because I burn and I rise
because fist pump to the underdogs
because I am breathing and this is living from seed to dust
because my capacity to love overflows my ‘Best Mum in the World’ mug
because I’m not a slut who asked for it after all
because the scared little girl who was hiding in the dark since 1980 has finally stepped into the sunlight
because fly little one, fly.

According to Brueghel
                         Williams
                                    the class

when Icarus fell
it was clear
                                    there was a lot more going on

a farmer was ploughing
his field
                                     in obsolete military garb

the whole pageantry
concerned
with itself
                                    yes, but –

                                    what about the shepherd
                                    the bollock dagger
                                    and is that

                                    a dead sheep
                                    down there
                                    in the bushes?

                                    who cares about
the wing’s wax
                                    when

                                    there is no grass
                                    where the sheep
                                    are grazing

                                    and the farmer
                                    is a demoted soldier                   
                                    by the look of things.

                                     significantly
                                     there was
                                     another story
                                   noticed

this was                        presumption
                                     which led to
Icarus drowning
                                    in the first place

I watch mountains drink
                        the sky, its burden
of purple and cold steel
                        blues bulge.
Overflow of thirst
                        for newness. Anaesthetise
stinging nettles of old
                        pain. Still yearning
I look up and see
                        God in nature —
the mother whose round hips
                        I swim to and clutch
when sky mirrors
                        the sea
and storms, I am afraid of disappearing
                        at the very edges.
I seek calmness in quiet —
                        mother hushes with her scent —
pinecones and kawakawa.
                        I saw the mountains
drink the milk of the mother.

A solitary, self-satisfied pigeon
preens her burgeoning flank, lavender pink breast,
contentedly crooning to herself.

She grips the mottled, lichened ridge tiles of
the dark basalt stone terrace,
patiently, scrounging every last morsel.

She plots her next move, surreptitious forager,
twitching head, scanning 270°, furtive explorations,
the Huatoki Stream will offer no easy dinners either.

Amid dusk when the sky
was peppered sour orange
and the sun sat sideways,
we watched a notch
of a meteor blister
and break above us.

We are watching history, she said,
hands trembling.
Make a wish, he replied,
his voice cracking
and tumbling into orbit.

She squeezed her eyes shut
and I did too,
wanting beyond belief
at that blushed
collapse of something
so unworldly.

We wished
on that key-stroke ribbon
of interminable bloom,
dragging itself
across the country
and overflowing the horizon,
believing that it flew for us.

Us, so content in gazing
skyward, believing that
our wishes were justified
and looked so
everlastingly endless.

Somewhere a mower plows somewhere
a dog barks somewhere children laugh
cry and fall silent somewhere a
train dashes through its tunnel chased
by an imagined fox somewhere
a crowbar is dropped somewhere not
far away a hammer-drill tears
at the hollow insides of an
apartment drowning the birds that
were long forgotten the train that
had long since passed the children that
couldn’t comprehend silence the
mower that might be memory
and the dog that dropped like a stone.

Wolves live in our cistern.
They moved in the day Mr Adams
told us a story in assembly
about that Russian boy.

Their disguise is a cascade
of blued water, like Siberian blizzards.
Their appetite as deep and impossible
as the River Volga;

Nikolai was only the start.

I know it’s true:
Mum stops tutting
when I ask her to flush,
saves herself, tooth and claw,
for Dad.

Even in daytime, the wolves
don’t rest. Nikolai was taken at noon.
Rising wind screamed like a child
in the sleigh-driver’s ears,
and falling snow buried
the smell of blood.

Running isn’t fast enough.

Wolves can’t climb, I whisper,
over and over, but I fall asleep
with my head under cover,
and lie with my legs tight-crossed
if I wake in the night.

My parents’ voices whip
like winter winds on Russian plains,
and I stay awake,
remembering the boy Nikolai.

you are the line
I am the colour

you are the form
I am the after-image

you are the shutter
I am the plate

you are the brush
I am the vista

you are the cut
I am the content

we are
each to the other
as the other
together

be it hourglass or mirror

heart losing control over eyes
act is over
time to go
back to the source
or destination
shedding its clothes
body dismantling into five elements
for salvation
or another pair of jeans
but the mind remains
with its cravings
and memories
of heartbreaking
transcendental moments
seeking the ocean
through rough patches
collecting impressions
investing in joys attachments
in cycle of desire and fulfillment
over lifetimes in pursuit
of nothingness