Lines composed less than a mile from the nearest Kum & Go

 

Two months have passed & each time I see that suggestive sign
I think of impermanence, as well as faceless figures emerging from
the shadows to entertain the kind of desire that makes thrillseekers
of us all before disappearing & taking on a new form. & so I find myself
buying a souvenir at a gas station just to remind me of my need
to hold on to every place that offers up somewhere soft to land
or a breeze to carry my breath back to those I’ve missed.
                                    Seasons, lovers or inspiration—come what may,
there is a reckoning with what the tides deposit on the shores of
our dreams for us to collect like trinkets. Once, a pearl got caught
in my throat & all I could sing were songs about never seeing
the cordial coastlines of home again.
                                    I left the doors to the past and the future unlocked
in the hope that I would be visited by songs yet to be written. You see,
I’ve been on Wellington time this whole time, so I know how this part
of the story ends & what will greet me when I step across the threshold.
                                    Beauty can take the form of the memories & secrets
passing through a petrol-stained concrete forecourt, lives lived through
seasons that test the roles they’re meant to play. Lovers & enemies
alike grasp at the plausibility of fate to decide whether or not to|
pay mind to the return of the Machiavellian mastermind, who
doesn’t need shadows to trick or treat.
                                    We know that there’s more than two colours that
can dictate whether we stay still or take a chance on change, more
than two ways of looking at the same cloud in an ever-shifting sky.
We all feel this in our blood.
                                     I’ve drawn a line between fluorescent lighting &
photoperiodism to settle the ellipsis, so that I may swallow the pearl
& sing of my own homecoming without forgetting where I’ve been
or the landscapes that held my absence

 

                                                                      Iowa City, November 2024

Chris Tse

Chris Tse is the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2022-25. He is the author of three collections published by Auckland University Press, and co-editor of Out Here, an anthology of Takatāpui and queer writers from Aotearoa. Chris is a former editor of The Spinoff’s Friday Poem and has guest edited issues of Best New Zealand Poems, Starling, and Cordite Poetry Review.  In 2024, he participated in the International Writing Program Fall Residency at the University of Iowa.