My father’s toolbox
A slack-jawed shifting spanner
A yellow tape measure
that pulls out stiffly
and won’t retract
A small white pill
A fishing knife, stain-blotched wood,
line of triangular fangs
A piece of heavy wire bent into a hook
The key to a long-lost lock
Pliers and wire-cutters,
red vinyl grips worn dull
by years of hands
A seven-sided Irish silver coin
dating from the year I left home
A wrench
whose name I don’t know
A World War Two Australian penny,
verdigris film on wide brown disc,
an unshot kangaroo, the head
of a long-dead king
A new set of screwdrivers,
square-heads, sealed
in their blister pack
A sturdy green-handled Phillips …
The Honeymoon Screwdriver!
(Did little me name it?)
Translucent golden resin handle
fifty-years-later smooth
Nothing in this torn carton
will help me dig out the stubborn screw
inside his left-behind closet,
release the mildewed shelf
I have to get in a man
with corded forearms
like my father
used to have
Jackson
First published in Westerly
Jackson lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin. In 2021, they moved to Aotearoa from Australia, where Recent Work Press published their fourth poetry collection, A coat of ashes, based on their award-winning PhD thesis. In New Zealand, their poems have appeared in takahē, A fine line, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook and other journals. They are on the committees of the New Zealand Poetry Society and Dunedin’s monthly poetry reading group Octagon Collective.
NZ Poetry Shelf 