late

pee in bottle
shake
and wait

cross fingers for blue

clock hands s n a i l
            five minutes a desert
                                    a continent

ears conch shells to baited breath
heart knells in tight chest
waiting for blue

in no man’s land

in limbo

mutter litany of amulets
please be blue don’t be red please be blue

last minute
sixty seconds sprint to zero
            twist lid
            splash wrist
            drips

spill

on pale carpet

red

It began well. Loneliness took a back seat
In my new surrounds, my hastily appointed,
Pandemic-induced home-office where,
Bubbled away from the push and shove
Of city streets, the boredom of the boardroom,
My natural shyness ventured out, asserted itself;
Found solitude to its liking, demanded more.
In my new continuum, with the keyboard
My slim black portal to the outside world,
I cranked up the pace, accomplished what I had
To do in record time and, like a latent adolescent
Dizzied by the siren call of cyberspace, wallowed in
A myriad sites and groups, buffered by geography
And the knowledge I would likely never meet
The people behind the posts. There’s relief in that.

Most of the time, I hold my duplicity at bay,
Quell the flaring of frustration that there’s nothing
Between like and love, no way to say unsure,
Or give doubt due consideration. Yet in all this
I am complicit, and push away a foggy awareness
That a certain levelling out is taking place, that
I’m choking in the silken clutch of supposed
Communication. My coffee grows cold; so too
The irony that I’ve never had so many friends,
Yet have seen my neighbour only once.

August afternoon down by the barn
With buddies doing what we do

Kids across forest creek make too much
Noise for us, disturb [un]natural mood

But then I start wondering to myself if they
Instead were our favored grandchildren

If you would be so damn annoyed by ruckus
—Before just blasting out Jim Morrison.

ethereal
astonishing beauty
evoked through rapturous lensing,
swooping and gliding down rushing over stones
descending into your depths
alongside schools of startled fish,
I wish I was a frigate bird
witnessing from above the uncanny patterns
the waterways carve through the landscape.
a reaffirmation of the beauty of you, river,
and an urgent call to protect you
mainly, from all human-kind.

(a found poem taken from things said by people who care about my well being)

just how much do you weigh?
i know you said you want to gain strength but
you actually want to lose weight

i saw you eating cake and i was like
oh, honey no!
you have to stick to fruit and
i know you said you’re not interested but
i’ll send you the diet info anyway because
you aren’t allowed to get enjoyment out of eating
you’d be a better person of you ate more plain foods

i can say this to you because i love you
you aren’t strong enough and
it hurts me that you don’t think about how it makes
me feel
when you eat
isn’t that enough motivation for you?

i realised we were almost the same size and i was like
oh my god this,
this is my wakeup call!
but you’re not that fat
i’ll stop you before you get that big
i’ll make you thin whether you like it or not
because it’s less about you and more about the
people who have to look at you

now, don’t go acting upset
it’s fine for you to look like that
i’m just saying that
i
personally
would have to kill myself

i don’t believe you
i’ve never seen anyone say
anything mean to you or any other
fat person
you’re just making it up because
you’ve got low self-esteem

Sally, smiling with her subcutaneous-white teeth,
            looks very thin now.
She wears a red viscose top from Farmers
            and bares SmileDirect teeth
like in a desert full of yellow bones
Sally is a spine bleached by the sun.

Beautiful Sally.
I heard we evolved from apes to homosapiens
because we started taking magic mushrooms
            and found God.

My brain, your brain, Sally’s brain,
all grey wet walnuts driving our meat machines
as we shrink and grow and shrink and grow
            and waste our time counting almonds
            and halving stock cubes and slicing cucumbers
            and pretending they taste like chips.

Just eat some chips, Sally.
You and your magic brain and desert teeth—
hair a golden helmet, plate held like a god’s attribute,
            like hungry Minerva

like an ancient statue slowly shrinking as the desert winds
of seashells and low-cal rice cakes
            blow all about you.
Sally—the lone and level sands
stretch far away. Across the distance you watch me
like the Mona Lisa, like a predator or a carnivore—

like something hungry.

In our line at the bank we are flat, silent
yellow feet
prayer beads
at hopeful 1 metre intervals.
There’s a woman
preparing for combat
catches my eye then away with that
10 metre glaze.

Her eyeliner black flicks
uneven ticks on a pro forma
and she whispers ‘aid’ like she’s calling for water.
Dehydrated triage nurse
leads her to a corner
draws the curtains and plugs her in.

I imagine her lying prone like a burn victim
endoscoped
financial hardship raising suspicious lumps in her liver
heart a bag of worms.

They’ll eye her as they tap tap on ergonomic keyboards.
Inspect possible sources of salvation and
finding she still has KiwiSaver
signal for gastric suction.

There’s a back door for people like her
finding themselves more invisible by the day
pale hands clutching at diaphanous skin.

I had to write your name
On a form for
The first time today,
And I misspelled it,
And I wonder if that’s indicative
Of something
I keep getting told how
Fast time is passing,
And that’s not doing wonders
For my mental health.
Teachers keep talking
About exams around the corner
And my mother
Mentions universities
At least once per night
And my friends are getting
Jobs and restricteds and partners;
This is the happiest I’ve felt
In forever
And it feels like it’s slipping away.
Every Friday night
When I get sad,
I want to write a letter
To my future self
Like I never wanted to in school,
Because at least if I can’t hold
Onto this happiness forever,
I can remind myself
One day
That I had it once,
And maybe that will be enough to keep going
I go for runs
Every Saturday
And I get out of breath
And I have to stop every 200 metres
And the headaches come and go,
But my coach tells me I’m doing great
And I’m showing great progression.
And I spend hours in my room
‘Working’, ‘studying’, whatever,
But really I do nothing,
Because I can’t make myself focus
Or maybe it’s really because I just
Don’t want to admit that I don’t know what I’m doing
Anymore
And I don’t want people to know.
And I wake up
And I get on trains
And I go to school
And I go to parties
And I go to bed
And maybe Lorde was right,
Because Ribs won’t stop playing
In my head
And it makes me think about
Stonefields,
And how I learnt to ride a bike
And how I climbed out on the roof
And how I put my head through the wall
And how I was only 7
And lord where did that boldness go,
Because by god if now I’m not just
Some shell who blushes when called on in class
And who can’t talk to people he sees every day
You should have nothing to
Do with this poem, really,
But like most things these days,
I link it back to you nonetheless.
And maybe it’s because I don’t know what we are yet
Or maybe it’s because I know how it’ll end
Or maybe it’s because I know you, you’re like me, and I know we can’t work,
Not really;
But everyday my friend tells me about how happy he is,
How he can’t wait till the next time he sees his boyfriend,
How they’re both going mental because they haven’t seen
Each other in a week (gasp!),
And I want that,
God I want that,
But I can’t feel it about you,
Or anyone, really;
Because I want that life
Of pining
And picnic dates
And kisses on public transport
And being so loved up everyone hates you;
But I think I love the chase more than the catch,
I think, to paraphrase another writer better than me,
That I’m fundamentally broken,
In some subtle but essential way
But I still address every poem
As if you’re reading them,
My imaginary audience;
Well, how’s this?
I couldn’t wait for puberty to kick in
And now I go nuts if I don’t shave
Every other day (which you know is more than necessary),
And should I be more guarded about this?
Meh??
What’s the point?
This way,
I get to hear my history teacher
Stumble terribly over my new pronouns
(She is trying),
And watch the senior staff
Sweat over the threat of my existence
To their precious school image,
And worry day and night
In the back of my head,
Like a broken record player,
About how everyone else would react,
And how I would look
(Would I be hot??),
And sometimes I look in the mirror
And am disgusted with who I am
And other times I look in the mirror
And am disgusted with who I want to be.
I just feel like I have to make a decision,
But I don’t wanna ruin Senior Ball
And look like some grotesque in the photos,
But my hips don’t set until I’m 18,
I just feel like I’m running out of time!
Time
Time
Time
Time
Time
It’s always the fucking clock!
Ticking away
Reminding
Watching
Waiting
Death’s faithful little right-hand man

When we first got the internet at home,
I printed out a lot and I mean A LOT
of pictures of Drew Barrymore and
blu-tacked them around my room,
which I didn’t have to share with either
of my sisters.

Think about how long it would have taken
to download twenty pictures of
Drew Barrymore on 2001 dial-up, and then
how much ink it would have taken to
print them all out on our very first colour printer
which my dad probably still has in the garage
if he hasn’t taken it to the e-waste collection.
I made sure not to pick them up too quickly
so the ink didn’t smudge.

Our over-the-road neighbour,
a woman my grandmother’s age who always
signed her name inside quote marks
as if she didn’t really exist,
sold me and my sisters the tape of Never Been Kissed
at her garage sale and we watched it on repeat
because it was our first teen movie.

I liked the way Drew Barrymore looked with her
short blond hair so I Asked Jeeves for pictures of
Drew Barrymore.

I would look at the pictures of Drew Barrymore
before I went to sleep. “I’m such a big fan of
Drew Barrymore,” I would think
as I closed my eyes.

Once I was so vast you could not see from edge
to edge, you could not sail across in a day.

Now I am a shrunken excuse of a sea, withered
and parched like a leaf on a dying tree.

Littered on my beaches are not shells but skeletal
carcasses of boats marooned in dust.

You drank me dry. You drained me for your melons
and your cotton, bartering white gold

for the lives of all the fish who swam in my waters
all the muskrats who burrowed in my wetlands
of all the birds who nested on my shores.

And now you say I’m nature’s error,
a sea without enough water to weep.
I am a casualty
of your cruelty, but you shrug your shoulders,
and rename me desert.