Counter Culture
We called it ‘Preacher House’. Though the preacher that once lived there didn’t do much preaching within the curdled beige walls, preferring instead to commit sex crimes against his congregation. Or so the story goes. Preacher House was, this threadbare winter, rattling with Newtown hipsters, who drank oat milk and shaved their eyebrows clean off. Without them, they looked foetal and pallid: amoeba fermenting in a draughty womb, holier-than-thou vegans preaching polyamory. Where once sermons rang, the tinny drone of online lectures and oh god prayer of Tinder hookups reigned.
Shed Your Skin
Hello cemetery road, you with your
Long gravel tail that stretches endlessly
Towards some vague expression of peace,
There amongst the tallest trees.
You are rotting
Nautilus
In this dream, I don’t leave for months. Time is the same, a silvered, ever-present light that filters through our house, through the windows, through the glass doors. I trace the corridors of this house in a memory. Cherry-wood floors, white-washed walls, linen curtains that breathe in and out with the breeze. The house is rich in warmth, it cocoons and slumbers; at night we are rocked, as if by a mother.
Ballad of the Rebel Angels
Shadowed figures crawl o’er the hills —
From what crevasse they came
No creature knows but may distil;
Eternal furnaced flame.
Patupaiarehe
Margaret Allen sighed and scratched at her scalp, finding the kitchen ceiling no more interesting than the wall. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday, and the gnawing pit in her stomach pained her. Ever since her dad had followed that high, piping call from the forest days earlier, her mother had been on edge until she, too, went to investigate. The hopeful smile she wore as she left, just after their last breakfast together, still lingered in Margaret’s mind.
Exit Music (For A Planet)
Inhale.
With every passing day he knew it was coming; when, exactly, was still unclear.
He’d spent years leading a team of nineteen scientists from various fields, and now it had all come to this.
Inside the Hollow Tree
Welcome to the beaver den!
here I squirrel away
things that might be useful.
Trust me, I need
my drawer of scarves I never wear.
Under the Weather
It is mid-June and
you haven’t seen daylight for quite some time,
haven’t left your bed or felt a faucet’s steady drip on your back, can’t
recall the last time you smiled where it wasn’t on cue
wasn’t it April? was that
the last time the sky was blue before the thunderclap that sent you home
Two children daring each other to touch an electric fence
In winter your muscles fasten together in an icy paralysis. You walk barefoot on the railway – your feet warmed by the rumble of trains. You can feel their vibrato as they approach, shaking the dewdrops on the frost-bound earth.
You hold fast to the sleepers, enamoured by the headlights and the scream of the whistle.
aquarium dreams
tonight I pledge to have aquarium dreams
there will be octopi and axolotl and anemone and eels
they can nibble on blood worms and prawns and peas
taste the ends of my fingers and pieces of cheese
Travellers
They were eager, serious travellers, absorbed in understanding what was to be seen and discovering what was hidden… this city and its secrets, these barely established inhabitants bearing a certain anonymity appointed only to those fresh to these streets like indeterminable, new-fallen leaves dancing in the fierce self-assurance of the biting Pōneke breeze.
Soon, she thinks, soon they will know me.
Shortages of Blood
It’s not like he had planned to visit, but after five long, wet hours, the downpour outside is showing no signs of slowing down. The museum is a proper building at least, not the wood and cardboard that every other house in this city seems to be built of. The floors are reasonably wide and airy, the lighting mildly pleasant. He saunters into one room after the other, looks at exhibits and pretends to read the signs next to them. Some of them don’t have signs at all.