lucky x radiant x glow

black skirts and shirts x are meant
to be slimming x but the popular x taste
is to show off x your belly x the important
thing x is to go x against comfort x against
well-being x nature x is at capacity
and has been generous xx stop fretting
aka x multi-tasking x to try x is to suffer
and the work x isn’t only in x the evenings
when x you have been blessed x with perfect
reflexes x and expenses x that lend
to bending xx mummy x they’ll call you
which is lucky x when x you have no other
name xx everyone says x it will be hard x to say
goodbye x but you’ll always remember x lying
looking x at the rest x of your body x the electric
sensation pulsing x from x your family x tree

Louise Wallace

Louise Wallace’s fourth poetry collection, This Is A Story About Your Mother, is forthcoming from Te Herenga Waka University Press in May 2023. She is the founder and editor of Starling, an online journal for young New Zealand writers, and the editor of the 2022 issue of Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems. She lives in Ōtepoti | Dunedin with her husband and their young son.